


Born to Lose

by audreywatson28



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: 1930s, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Post Season 5, Post-Season/Series 05, Romance, Season 5 Spoilers, Smut, Spoilers, post s5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23725864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreywatson28/pseuds/audreywatson28
Summary: "If you fall in love, you will put her in danger and before you know it, she will be dead."Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Sooner or later, she would pay the price of having loved a man like him.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 99





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first Peaky Blinders fanfiction! English is not my first language so, if you find some grammar mistakes, please let me know in the comments. It will help me to improve my english writing. Thanks for reading!

_"If you fall in love, you will put her in danger and before you know it, she will be dead."_

The sermon aunt Polly had given him not too long ago replayed in his mind like a broken vinyl and chased him like a ghost through the faded alleys of Small Heath. Tommy quickened his pace and when he exhaled, his breath condensed in the freezing night air and rose into the starry sky.

Sooner or later it was going to happen. Sooner or later, she would pay the price of having loved a man like him. It had happened to Grace before, but sadly for Tommy, having experienced such a loss did not mean he could bear another one. He was in denial: she wasn't dead. Couldn't be dead because he had protected her as best he could. Tommy didn't want to accept that she was gone because by doing so he would be taking his share of the blame.

He turned a corner and at the end of the greyish street he identified a crowd in gloom. The dying yellow lantern in front of the old brick house barely lit their heads in wool caps and scarves. It was easy to identify the slender figure of Polly in her ermine fur coat and how she wrapped her arms around a shattered Ada, trembling and victim of a pain-filled cry.

"Where is she?" Tommy asked the question desperately and breathlessly, but all he got for an answer was silence.

Polly looked at him questioningly as Ada uncovered her face and turned her attention to him. He witnessed his sister's eyes twinkle with anger and the expression of defeat was transformed into one of irrepressible hatred.

Tommy didn't see the first slap coming but was able to stop the second one on time by grabbing Ada by the right wrist. The woman used her available hand to punch him in the chest as she shouted insults and sobbed. Aunt Polly approached the scene and tried to stop Ada without doing much effort, revealing that she was in complete agreement with her niece's reaction.

"She's dead!" Ada shouted. Her face was red and soaked with tears. "You killed her! You, Tommy! You killed her!"

_< < It can't be >>_, in his thought, Tommy didn't believe his sister's words.

"I want to see her," he demanded and turned his attention to the facade in front of him. The wooden door was half-closed.

"What for?" Now it was Polly who spoke to him and she did it with a frown. Ada had lost herself again in her aunt's embrace. "Do you think your sister would be like this if her friend were alive? Do you think you can resurrect her?" Polly didn't even give him time to process her words. "She's dead, Thomas. It was the fascists who pulled the trigger but it was you who indirectly put that bullet in her head. I warned you and I warned her. Neither of you listened to me. I thought you two would be less stupid. I was wrong.

"I want to see her," he repeated and witnessed Polly squinting at him, confused.

"Oh, Lord," her aunt exclaimed in a worried sigh. "You are devastated, don't you? You don't believe me."

_< < No, I don't believe you >>_, Tommy answered in his mind but something had broken inside him. Something had changed since he received that call and went to the darkest corner of the city that saw him born. Something had left his soul when he caught a glimpse of Ada in that state, and a familiar old feeling of dread began to run through his body. It was the realization, the awareness that the nightmare had ceased to be a distant dream and had become a reality. If he had to be honest with himself, he knew that she had died from the moment Polly called him, but only then did his heart begin to assimilate it.

He swallowed and it seemed to his throat as if he were swallowing sand. His eyes watered and burned from the heat of the tears which he did not bother to contain. Long time ago, in France, he had learned that men also cry.

"I need to see her."

"And what will you do when you see her?" Polly looked troubled and suddenly took him by the arm as if she wanted to comfort him too. "You will do something crazy, I know. Tommy, you don't need to see that. It does us no good. Go back home".

"Tell me, what the fuck am I going to do at home?" The words came out of his mouth with something that ranged from anger to pain. "Will I have a whiskey? Will I sit in front of my bloody stove while I know she's in there, lying on the cold floor, dead because of me?"

Ada, hearing him say that, increased the sadness of her crying. People had begun to disperse as soon as they had seen him arrive and there was hardly anyone left under the lantern. The night was even colder than before.

"You have a wife and two children waiting for you at home," Polly reminded him. "Go home, and when you arrive, go to your children's room and kiss each one. Then lie down on your bed next to Lizzie, wake her up and tell her you love her. Lie to her and pretend that this never happened."

_"Pretend she never existed."_ Those were the words that her aunt wanted to transmit but that she could not pronounce in front of Ada without risking that his sister would be the victim of a violent outburst again.

Tommy wiped his tears on the overcoat sleeve and looked in his pocket for the cigarette case. He raised his eyes to the clear sky and placed the tobacco on the lips. For as long as he could remember, the Birmingham sky had rarely been so clean, so overflowing with stars. With a lighter he lit his cigarette and turned away, but not before looking one last time towards the wooden door. An impulse charged with vehemence cried out for him to enter the brick house, but he managed to dispel that thought when he remembered the fateful night when Grace had died in his arms: that image had been etched in his mind and would be there, eating away his soul until the day the heart gave its last beat. He knew that he could not bear another similar image without finally falling into the abyss of madness.

Polly was right: At home, a wife and two children were waiting for him. He couldn't afford to give in to insanity, not yet. Tommy would avenge the death of the woman he now left lying on the frozen ground, in a dark house in the most inhospitable corner of the city. That would be the way he would have to apologize and redeem himself for not having known how to protect her well enough.

"Sorry." Tommy apologized in a whisper and he knew she had heard him.


	2. The box

Tommy thought alcohol was playing tricks on him when, out of the darkness, he caught a glimpse of Ada carrying a box, standing on the threshold of the door leading to his study. He hadn't seen his sister in weeks and the appearance of her figure led him to rub his eyes. He took a sip of the whiskey and the drink burned his esophagus.

"It's true what Lizzie says." Suddenly, the hallucination was determined to speak. "Your condition is pitiful."

Ada's heels entered the room and the noise they made at the contact with the wooden floor caused him a headache. Tommy felt as if someone was hitting his skull with an iron mallet and impulsively massaged his temples. He wanted to vomit, go to sleep, and keep drinking until he vomited again.

His sister left the box on the desk in front of him, circled him, and drawn the velvet curtains. Tommy made a groan of annoyance when he was blinded by the sunlight that from one second to the other invaded the studio and filled everything with an unbearable light. Then, he knew that Ada's annoying appearance was not an appearance in itself, but it was her in person, who, for some unknown reason, was speaking to him again.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He asked and forced his eyes open. They burned horribly.

“That’s a good question.” Beyond the pronounced dark circles and the absence of makeup, Ada looked as always. Tommy watched her sit in one of the chairs across the desk. “There’s not a second where I don't question what I'm doing. Trust me.”

Since that fateful night, Tommy had not had a totally sober day. He was spending hours in his study, walking from one end to the other with his glass of whiskey and cigarettes and, ignoring the advice that Aunt Polly had given him, he slept there instead of in bed with Lizzie. He had never been an exemplary father, but since he lost what he considered the last glimpse of hope, he tried to stay away from his children. He loved those kids but did not want to make them partakers of his misery; misery that his wife always insisted on highlighting and, in some way, increasing.

Drunk and all, Tommy found the way Ada was staring at the wooden box in front of her eyes. That she was there was strange enough considering she incriminated him in its entirety for the death of her friend, but stranger was she brought with her a box that she refused to open.  
  
“What's that?” Tommy was forced to ask.  
  
"Diaries." Ada's short answer seemed enough, so he took the nearly empty bottle and poured himself a little more whiskey. Ada seemed offended by his disinterest. “Olivia's diaries ” she added.  
  
His hand trembled with spasm when he heard that name and a little drink splashed on the polished wood of the desk. Tommy raised his eyes until he met Ada's and both siblings looked at each other for a couple of seconds until she relented with her jaw clenched.  
"I brought them for you to read," Ada said. “You know Olivia was a writer. She wrote all the time and even put poetry into the shopping list.” For a second, her sister's voice cracked but she struggled to maintain her integrity. “You know all this, so I don't know why I explain it to you.”  
  
"I didn't know she wrote diaries," he surprised himself, wondering how many mysteries the woman he had loved had taken to her grave.  
  
"Neither do I." Ada shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “I discovered the box in her closet a week after the funeral, when I was brave enough to dispose of her belongings. I was going to return them to her family, in London, and that was what I did with everything else ... except with the diaries. I couldn't do it. Much to my regret, I couldn't control myself and started reading them. This amount you see here was written by the time she lived with me.  
  
With difficulty Tommy got to his feet and, controlling the unbearable dizziness as best he could, opened the box and peered down at it. It was full of notebooks of all sizes, and some had stuff tucked between the pages. A pain settled in his chest: she had lived with Ada for only a year and, apparently, in those diaries she had documented in detail her chaotic life in Birmingham.  
"Why do you want me to read them?" He couldn't help asking the question with a certain annoyance. It seemed as if Ada was trying to dig into the wound as revenge.  
  
"You're the protagonist of each of these diaries," she said, offended. “Olivia came to live with me at the end of March last year and since she met you a couple of days later, she hasn't stopped writing about you. She's… quite descriptive in some scenarios, but when I finished reading all these chronicles, I realized that, to be a Shelby, you were kind enough to her. And apparently you loved her. Or at least, so she believed.”  
  
"I loved her." Tommy had an urgent need to defend himself and saw Ada looking at him uneasily.  
  
"Do you remember when you met her?" Ada asked.  
  
"Yes." Tommy was dizzy and didn't feel like continuing with the talk.

"It was in this same house, during the gala dinner I gave to promote my literary magazine. A gala where the Peaky Blinders had to do their thing.”  
  
Ada stood up and took a diary from the box. Opening it, she took out a photograph between the pages and handed it to him. Tommy received it with disgust and before putting all his attention on the image that returned his sight, he prepared himself for the blow that the memory would give him.  
  
In grayscale and on the piece of paper, all the guests of that dinner that seemed so far away were immortalized. He did not bother to identify all the faces because he was only interested in one: hers. He found her where he knew he would find her: next to Ada and with a glass of cognac in her right hand. Tommy allowed himself a slightly bitter smile. She was beautiful.  
  
The blue velvet of her dress looked sad in that gray hue, but the dark brown color of her hair had intensified, as had her brown eyes, deep as the void itself. The photography had managed to perfectly capture both her beauty and her discomfort, and the immense desire she had to go home.  
  
"Olivia was about to shout she wanted to leave," Ada observed sadly.  
  
"She didn't shout it, but she did tell me." Tommy could barely speak. “After that bastard humiliated her in front of everyone, we met in the balcony and she was crying.”  
  
"I know, she wrote it in her diary."  
  
“Did she?”  
  
"Tommy, I'm telling you she wrote everything," Ada took his brother's cigarette case, which was sitting on the desk, and lit a cig. “Here. Read the first diary. Start reading from this entry: April 1st of last year, ”she demanded, opening the notebook almost in half and pointing anxiously.  
  
“No.”

“What the hell…?”  
  
Tommy had to admit that the pile of diaries made him curious. He found it interesting to delve into the memories of the woman he had lost. But he couldn't read them because he would feel that he was being too daring and would violate, for the first time, the limits that she had been able to set while she was alive. Second, he knew that reading her words would be like bringing her to life just for a little while, when he wanted her forever. When finished, he would lose her again and Tommy was not prepared for such a thing.  
  
"Leave me alone," the somber tone of voice did not intimidate his sister, "and take this bloody box with you."  
  
"Interesting." Ada was visibly surprised but still allowed herself to be sarcastic. “Thomas Shelby was able to deal with the Germans in France, with the Italians in Small Heath and New York and with the Russian aristocracy, but he is afraid of what a woman can say about him in her diary.” Tommy clenched his fists. “So that's your weak point. The fascists will be delighted to know ...”  
  
"Take the fucking box and leave."  
  
"I'm not leaving and I'm not taking the box, Thomas Shelby." Ada put the cigarette in the ashtray. She was furious. “I will read and you will listen to me.”  
  
“You won’t”  
  
"Oh, yes, I will" Ada challenged him. Tommy snorted and rubbed his eyes. No one ever listens to him.


	3. The night they met

_April 1st, 1931._

By now I should be in my bed, but it is already well known that inspiration comes to me late at night, so I will continue to write.

My ribs ache because of the corset and my feet are blistered. As I explained in my previous entry, the night of March 31 would be the gala dinner of Ada's magazine. It took place at the house of one of her brothers, on the outskirts of Birmingham, and what happened tonight left a mark on my body and soul.

I've always had a tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatize things, and my friends have reminded me this whenever they could. Ada has been one of them and for that, I am eternally grateful. Without her advice and scolding, I would never have attended the gala: I was too nervous and expected the worst. After all, it would be the first time I read one of my poems in public. I was terrified of the guests, all men of culture, hearing the uninhibited poetry of a woman of my class.

My fears came true thanks to a certain man, but on the other hand I had the pleasure of being admired by my friend and her strange family, in particular by one of her brothers.

His name is Thomas, and I saw him for the first time during the reception.

I was stunned by the luxuries that surrounded me and was clutched at Ada's arm like a little boy clings to his mother's skirts. The cognac was swaying in the crystal glass because of my nervous pulse when two men and a woman approached us. The woman gave off an aroma of French perfume so strong that for a moment I felt more intoxicated by it than by the drink I was forcing myself to drink. Despite her age, she wore a beautiful red dress with a plunging cleavage and a necklace of pearls decorated her fine neck. One of the men was quite tall and slender and, behind the thick mustache, he looked as nervous as I did; the other one, however, had serenity painted on his angular face and, when he fixed his blue eyes on me, a chill ran through my body.

"Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?" The woman asked before raising the cigarette holder to her lips.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated by the presence of those three. There was something particular about them, a certain attitude that did not correspond to the social class they were trying to represent. I knew that, like me, Ada had belonged to the working class before her family's business began to work extremely well, but that had been many years ago and, knowing the type of woman Ada was, I was struck that her family still had behaviors from the proletariat.

"Her name is Olivia Westerling, she's a poet, and we met in London," my friend introduced me. "Olivia, this is part of my family. She’s my Aunt Polly and she’s like a mother to me".

The woman reached out her gloved hand and shook mine with some haughtiness.

"Elizabeth Gray," she introduced herself. I understood then that the nickname "Polly" was only for the close ones.

"I’m Arthur." The man with the mustache hurried to say his name. "Ada's older brother".

"And he's my other older brother, Thomas," my friend said, finally introducing me to the other man.

Thomas didn't say a word. He nodded subtly and almost politely, then proceeded to ignore me completely. He had a cigarette between his fingers that soon put in his lips for a long puff.

"He is the homeowner, president of the Shelby Limited Company, and a Member of Parliament for South Birmingham," Ada said to me, somewhat uncomfortable by her brother's silence. Then she talked to him. "Tom, will it take long to serve the entree?"

"Ask Lizzie. She's taking care of that," said Thomas flatly. Immediately afterward, he nudged his brother and, with a slight nod, they both started to walk away. "If you'll excuse us…"

I noticed how Ada got suddenly tense ...

* * *

*******

* * *

"Did she say I ignored her?" Tommy interrupted the reading. He had been trying not to give in to it but had failed.

"That's what she wrote." Ada shrugged. "I don't remember with so much detail what happened that night but I was the one who introduced her to you and I'm sure that you didn't pay that much attention to her,” she added, and scrutinized him with her eyes.“Was it different for you?"

"Very different." Tommy took a long sip from his glass of whiskey. For some reason he was offended. "That night I had certain things going on in my mind, you know well which ones, but ..." He took a second when he realized that the reminiscence overwhelmed him. "When I saw her for the first time, stuck to you like a little scared bunny and wearing that dress ..." Tommy took the cigarette Ada had left in the ashtray. His body was asking for nicotine in industrial quantities.

"I continue reading." Ada tried to ignore the anguish that had suddenly hit her brother.

* * *

*******

* * *

I noticed how Ada got suddenly tense and approached her aunt trying to simulate calm.

"Polly, please tell me they're not going to do what I think they're about to do." Using a quiet voice, Ada spoke through clenched teeth. "Not tonight, please."

Confused and knowing that this conversation didn't concern me, I walked away from both women and, being hostage to that damn blue velvet prison called dress, I walked through the large room with little mobility. I held the glass of cognac with fear as I struggled to ignore the gaze of the other guests.

I tried to distract myself by admiring the mansion. I didn't know for sure if I was short of breath due to the tightness of the corset or anxiety, so I began to look at the paintings that decorated the walls. They were mostly portraits of Thomas, the owner of the house. However, I found one where he was not present and this was the representation of a beautiful blonde woman, whose gaze hypnotized me for a moment. I wondered who that woman would be, and found out when, a couple of paintings later, I found her again with Thomas by her side and a chubby baby on her lap. I assumed that she was his wife, and I surprised myself with a smile as I whispered: "It was obvious."

"Excuse me" A feminine voice appeared at my side and I couldn't help but startle. Turning my face, I found a rather tall woman with an adamantine face and light blue eyes. "Are you Miss Westerling?"

"Yes"

"Nice to meet you," she said. "My name is Lizzie Shelby, Thomas's wife". The confusion overwhelmed me and, being too abrupt, I looked at the woman who was speaking to me and then at the blonde one in the painting. Lizzie noticed this and let me see an expression of displeasure. "We are going to take a picture. If you want to be in it, go to the hall".

Thomas Shelby's wife hurried away from me just as I was about to apologize. I didn't know why I was going to apologize to a stranger but my attitude had struck a chord. Thomas had a house full of paintings of a woman who was not his current wife but who —my intuition told me— had loved too much. Much more than he loved Lizzie at the time.

* * *

*******

* * *

"How observant you were, my dear Olivia," Ada whispered, then tore her eyes away from the page and stared at Tommy.

"What was 'obvious'?" Tommy ignored his sister's malicious comment. He had been brooding over a certain sentence.

"What are you talking about?"

"What did she mean when she said 'it was obvious'?" He asked the question impatiently.

"That could only be answered by her but I think she means that it was obvious that you would be married."

Tommy lifted his upper body over the desk and with a surprising speed for his drunken state, he snatched the diary from Ada.

"Oi!"

"I remember very well what follows: the picture, the conversations with people who weren't relevant, the tasteless entrees and all that shit." He took the last puff on the cigarette and put the butt in the ashtray. Victim of an unexpected anxiety, he began to turn pages. "I know this because I was watching her all night, even though she said I ignored her."

"Did she hurt your male pride?" Ada attacked with a mocking tone. "Olivia said you had ignored her the moment I introduced her to you..."

"I want to know what she wrote about main course," Tommy interrupted his sister. "Because, when we were sitting at the table, we exchanged glances and she got so nervous that ..."

"She spilled her wine," Ada finished the sentence for him. "Yes, she wrote about it, Tommy. And give me back the fucking diary. You are too drunk to read."

* * *

*******

* * *

At dinner time, we all headed toward the sumptuous dining room. A wide table ran the entire length of the room, and a stack of chairs surrounded the wooden surface on both sides, full of silverware and chandeliers. Above the head of the table was a huge painting, the largest painting I had ever seen in the manor, where Thomas was once again seen, now holding a white horse by the reins.

I was aware that the Shelby's immeasurable fortune had begun to sprout on uneven ground: horse racing betting. Only a couple of times I had the courage to ask Ada about how her family had made to make such a large amount of money in that randomly linked field since I was afraid that the bussiness had taken a course far from the law. She always avoided giving me a direct answer at all costs and through her avoidance, I knew she wanted to make me understand that the Shelbys' business was not something I needed to inquire into.

As I said before, I’m a proletariat myself and I know, thanks to my own experience, how difficult it is to make a small place in a world governed and directed by and for the powerful. I was born in a London East End neighborhood; my mother was a teacher and my father worked in a small printing shop. Thanks to my father's work and the books he brought me whenever an impression went wrong, I learned things about the world that I could not have learned in the poor school I attended. I fell in love with the stories, writing ... and the aroma of ink. I was lucky. I was fortunate for the simple fact of knowing what should be basic for any human being, and that is why I don’t understand how such a large family can go from living in the poorest neighborhood of Birmingham, to owning mansions in such a short span of time.

I'm laughing because, reading what I wrote, it sounds like I envy Ada. And no, I don't envy her. I adore her. Only Ada could give to me the opportunity I had tonight, and when Thomas gave her the seat at the table's head and she placed me on her right side, I understood that she wanted me to be the protagonist.

Thomas sat on the left side of Ada and was therefore facing me. At his side, his wife, and next to her, Arthur. Elizabeth Gray, or “Polly,” sat on my other side, and I couldn't see where the rest of the guests sat because I concentrated on breathing. I was short of breath again.

Ada stood up.

"Before start eating, I'd like to thank everyone who came tonight and bet on this new project," she started to say. "We are living in a new decade and I hope that through this magazine new writers with new ideas, will be revealed." Ada smiled a little nervously. "That's it, I just wanted to say thank you".

Applauses preceded the servants with food of all kinds. I asked for some wine to accompany the beef because I understood that is what you drink when eating beef. Why? Supposedly it enhances the flavors of meat but, if I am honest, I am not sure.

"Olivia was your name, wasn't it?" Elizabeth Gray talked me as a butler served wine for her as well. I nodded, taking the napkin to my mouth: I was already chewing on a piece of beef. "Ada introduced us to you and telling us what you do but not how you two met".

"We met in London," I said, hurrying to swallow.

"Yes, she told us that, too. But where?"

“It was at an East End women's club in 1923. We met every Friday to discuss women's suffrage".

"Women already vote" Arthur snapped with his mouth full.

"At the time we met, only women over 30 did" I said. "Our club actively fought for everyone to vote” I explained, trying to be as polite as possible.

"Bah, that's not important" Arthur questioned after taking a long drink from his glass of wine.

"Arthur, you're an animal" Polly cursed at him with narrowed eyes and then looked at me, a little friendlier. "I assumed you had ideals similar to Ada's, although I see you both and find it hard to believe. You are like day and night".

"What do you mean, Pol?" Ada asked.

"Well, your friend doesn't seem like the kind of feminist who violates public property and chains herself in front of Buckingham ... does she?" Polly was giving her full attention back to me and I was becoming more intimidated.

Suddenly, I had become the center of attention at the table and everyone there was waiting for my answer. I tried not to look at anyone in particular and turned my attention to the salad in front of me.

"If necessary, I would, but, in my opinion, we must first use democratic ways..."

A thunderous laugh from across the table made us all jump up and turn our heads toward the source of the sound. At the opposite head I met a man in his sixties, gray-haired but with abundant hair. His pale, wrinkled face was stretched with a mocking smile.

"And what would be the democratic ways, Miss?" Asked the man, who, although he had seen a couple of times at the reception, I did not know.

"We women have earned some participation in Parliament so…"

"Do you really believe that?" The man interrupted me. The silence at that table was terrifying and out of the corner of my eye I could see Ada squeeze the tablecloth. "Do you think women have their place in Parliament just because they were allowed to occupy chairs in it?" The tone in which he addressed me was increasingly disgusting. "You are wrong, Miss. The only way for women to be heard in Parliament is if they go to bed with a parliamentarian and if it occurs to him to repeat the stupidities said woman told him in bed."

"Lord Pennington ..." Ada mumbled and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the old man's attention.

"Unfortunately, men never remember what women say," Lord Pennington shrugged. "And even less so while we're focused on ... other business".

"I very much doubt that any woman has anything to say to you during such an act" Polly's voice was music to my ears, "since they would be too busy regretting."

I couldn't help but smile a little and Ada, seeing me in that state, smiled too. Arthur laughed out loud and Thomas and Lizzie exchanged a couple of words. The hubbub settled on the table.

"Well, I understand what you are saying, Mrs. Gray." Lorn Pennington spoke again. He was furious. "I am an old man and my young years are behind me but I am not the only member of Parliament at this table and his nephew, besides being a member of Parliament, is much more handsome than I am, right? What do you think, Mr. Shelby?"

Thomas raised his eyebrows and looked a little surprised.

"Do I have to answer this question in front of my wife?" Ada's brother tried to dodge the responsibility of issuing an answer.

Lizzie looked at him and forced a smile before speaking.

"Come on, dear. Don't make me look like a jealous woman. ” For some reason, Lizzie Shelby fixed her feline eyes on me. Undoubtedly, the painting situation had upsetted her greatly. "I'm also interested in knowing your opinion. I have always been in favor of women's rights."

"In that case ..." Thomas cleared his throat as if he were going to give the speech of his life. He was very handsome, and from the other side of the table, I could smell the fragrance of his cologne "I think you, Lorn Pennington, are immensely wrong."

"Am I? Can you tell me why?" The decrepit old man insisted. At that point, I already hated him. "Did some woman manage to get some of her whims “through you” to Parliament?

"No," Thomas denied, "and if they had tried, I would have ignored them."

"Tommy, what the hell ...?" Ada scolded quietly. Something threatened to break inside me for a second.

"I wouldn't have listened to them because I think women are capable enough to make themselves heard." Listening to him, whatever was about to break, remained intact. "You see. Without the help of anyone and doing everything by their own they managed to get the female vote. It doesn't matter if they did it by setting Scotland Yard vans on fire ... like my sister did" the guests, Ada included, laughed. "or using more peaceful ways like Miss Westerling here..."

He looked at me. And although it was not the first time we exchanged accidental glances that night, it was the first time that I felt something different in his eyes. As he caught me still smiling at the comment he made regarding Ada, a sparkle passed through his eyes and I felt myself dying. I was alarmed, nervous, and tried to hide the heat that was rising on my face having my glass of wine. My hands, sweaty from all that situation, played a trick on me and the glass slipped from my fingers, pouring all its content onto the spotless white tablecloth, the salad bowl and Ada's plate.

"Olivia!" Ada exclaimed, alarmed.

"I'm so sorry!" I apologized, trying to clean the wine with… white napkins.

"Don't worry, my dear," Polly said to me, with a certain suspicion in her expression. Something told me that she had realized what had caused my stupidity. "Servants are coming to clean up this mess. What were you saying, Thomas?"

"I forgot" Thomas snapped, satisfied. He was obviously happy that he didn't have to keep talking.


	4. A poem with no rhyme

Lizzie slipped to the side, exhausted, and the mattress bounced under her weight. In the dark, Tommy reached for the cigarette case he had left on the nightstand.

"Do you know when we last fucked?" Lizzie snuggled into his chest for affection. "Seven months. Seven fucking months".

Tommy didn't say a word. He had no desire to speak, nor anything to say. He lit a cigarette and the room was imbued with the scent of tobacco. It had been a long time since he smoked in bed. It had been a long time since he had slept in that bed.

"I'm sure you decided to stop fucking me after you first fucked Olivia Westerling." The grudge in his wife's voice contrasted with how loving she wanted to be in her caresses. "Or am I wrong?"

"Do you really want to know the answer?" Tommy was tired. As soon as he finished smoking, he would try to sleep for a couple of hours even if that meant having to submit to the torture of his usual nightmares.

"I already know the answer, Tom." Lizzie turned away from him, offended, and he heard her roll over in bed. Now her back was to him. "What I don't understand is why even after she was killed you refused to return to me. She died a month ago, and just today you have the dignity to kiss me again." He couldn't see her, but he knew she was crying.

"I still love her," he told her, after a couple of seconds of absolute silence where he took a long puff that set his lungs on fire. "I still love her and she won't forgive me if I can't find the one who killed her."

"She's dead!" Lizzie exclaimed in a fit of anger and sat down on the bed. Tommy felt her grip him tightly by the shoulders. "Forget her and come back to me, Tom!"

Lizzie burst into tears. An agonized and pain-filled cry which could not stir up any kind of feeling in him. He was empty inside. He was a shell, an inert being devoid of soul. He reached out a hand and stroked his wife's cheek, wiping away a few tears. She responded to the touch and interlaced her fingers tenderly. Lizzie was a good woman and she didn't deserve all that.

"Okay," her wife said suddenly, somewhat more resolutely. "I will give you the time you need to forget about her and avenge her death. Then promise me you'll be the man you were before the gala dinner again."

"I can't promise you that."

"Why?" She was crying again. "Why, Tom?"

"Because even if I avenge her death, I will never forget about her. Sorry, Liz"

He heard Lizzie get up, victim of a violent paroxysm, and almost run out of the room, barefoot.

Tommy got up and switched on the night lamp. The light allowed him to appreciate the rumpled bed and the clothing on the floor. He had intercepted Lizzie just as she was going to sleep, and she had been so shocked to see him outside his study that when he kissed her, she made a groan of amazement. When he tossed her onto the bed, he switched off the lamp, and even though Lizzie thought this was a strange attitude, she refrained from asking questions. Tommy supposed she was afraid of ruining the moment if she questioned him.

He had tried to forget Olivia at least that night and had failed. He had tried to make his wife happy at least that night and had only managed to increase her misery.

Naked, he went to the jacket that lay on the floor near his trousers, and looked for the diary in the inside pocket. Before opening it, he traced the edges of the cheap binding with his fingertips and brought it to his nose: it smelled like her, the fresh and floral perfume that not even the best perfumery in Paris could imitate.

He opened the diary and lingered for a couple of minutes, staring at the calligraphy. It was not the most beautiful and neat handwriting in the world, but it had been her handwriting, unique and unrepeatable.

He went back to bed and sat down, looked for the last sentence Ada had read to him a week ago. Ever since his sister stopped reading abruptly and told him that he had to read by himself from there, Tommy had never touched the box full of diaries again. He had left it on his desk, in the same place where Ada had placed it, and every now and then he would glance at it, tempted to know the memories that Olivia had written for herself. He hadn't been brave enough until that night.

He found the dinner's scene and smiled to himself. Tommy had never told Olivia what had been going through his mind the moment their eyes met and he saw her turn red as a tomato, because he never imagined in that precise moment she started to fall in love with him.

"It was different in my case, Oli," he talked to the nothingness in a whisper. "I fell in love with you when you read your poem."

* * *

*******

* * *

We stood up for the servants to change the tablecloth and I felt I was dying of shame. When we were able to sit down again, I avoided talking because I felt immensely stupid. Ada noticed this and kicked me under the table.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I made a mess"

"Are you going to give such importance to a tablecloth?" Ada analyzed me with her eyes "...There's something else, right?"

My friend knew me too well and that was one of the reasons why she stood out among my friends. A simple gesture could give me away before Ada's watchful eye and her maternal instinct was activated every time she saw me acting strangely.

I shook my head and kept from saying anything. Unconsciously, and for a fraction of a second, my eyes went to Thomas in front of me, who was absorbed in his thoughts, staring at his glass of wine. My reaction was enough for Ada.

"Oh God ..." she whispered and looked at her brother out of the corner of her eye. Then she frowned. "Oh no. No, Olivia." Ada took my hand and squeezed it hard as she moved closer to my ear. "He is married, you've already seen. And he's also an asshole. I tell you this because he's my brother and I know him".

"I think you're confused," I said, alarmed and in a voice too loud for my liking, which caught Polly's attention next to me.

"Your friend doesn't seem to feel very well," Polly said slyly. "The argument with Lord Pennington has left her a little nervous". I saw her raise her eyebrows and give a smile that ranged from complicity to mockery, and I hated myself for being so obvious.

"Well, you're going to have to forget about Lord Pennington ... and any other problem in your head," Ada scolded me, "because at coffee time you're going to read the poem that I want to publish in the first edition of the magazine."

"Ada, I don't think it's good time..."

"Are you joking?" My friend interrupted me abruptly. "I don't like this kind of events, you know. I organized this gala dinner because I need the men and women you see here to giving me their support and influence so it doesn't fail. You know how much I want this magazine to succeed, and you have been waiting for this opportunity since the factory closed." Thomas looked at us when he heard that. "You always wanted your poems to be known, why ...?"

"Factory?" Now Thomas was interrupting his sister. "Did you work in a factory, Miss Westerling?"

"Yes, in a textile factory, but I didn't work with the machines. My job was administrative, ” I said. "It closed at the end of last year."

"And you have been unemployed since then?" Thomas asked.

"Exactly but until now, being unemployed has not been a problem for me because after the Great Depression happened, I dedicated myself to saving every penny knowing that the factory was going to close sooner rather than later," I explained because I felt questioned.

"A visionary," Polly added.

"Smarter than the Shelby, for sure," Ada snapped, and I saw Thomas roll his eyes and sigh. "Well, going back to what concerns us: during coffee time you are going to read that poem, have you heard me?"

I had no choice but to agree because I couldn't deny anything to Ada. Especially if doing such a thing meant ruining her plans and destroying her illusion. So, for the rest of the dinner, I concentrated on gathering courage and convincing myself that passing out in front of everyone was not a possibility. I needed to prove to the guests, and especially to Lord Pennington, that I was all I used to preach: a woman proud of herself and her art.

After an extensive after-dinner where the guests exchanged ideas and debated on topics too banal in my opinion, we headed to the second floor of the mansion, to a living room with overstuffed armchairs, where coffee was brought to us.

From my handbag I took out the neatly folded paper where my poem was written. When everyone had their coffee cups and their cigarettes lit, Ada talked to me:

"Are you ready?".

"Yes".

Ada stood up and it was there that I noticed she was just as nervous as I was.

"My friend Olivia Westerling is going to recite one of her poems, which I have decided to incorporate in the first edition of the magazine". She told me to stand up. I approached Ada and once at her side I saw the gaze of all the guests on me. Even Thomas'. "The poem is called “Above My Body” and I consider it a wonderful piece of erotic poetry. Olivia, whenever you like...

My friend returned to her seat and, when I was alone facing that sea of eyes, I trembled. Once again, the silence overwhelmed me because I knew I had to break it. I don't consider myself a shy woman but I do have to confess that I suffer from stage fright and, like most writers, I prefer solitude. In that immense room, I was surrounded by people who stared at me and waited for me to display in front of them what I considered a part of my soul.

A second before I started reading, my instincts whispered to me that going to that dinner had been a bad idea.

_Above my body rests_

_the memory of his hands,._

_and the warm kiss that he deposited_

_on top of my stomach._

_Above my body rests_

_the tightest hug,_

_the moment we went to Heaven_

_united as a single soul._

_Above my body rests_

_the last sigh,_

_the last caress,_

_the dawn between the sheets._

No one said a thing. No one moved an inch. For a second, I thought I had before me a bunch of statues. I didn't expect an applause but I couldn't say for sure if that silence was good. I looked for Ada and saw her smiling, proud of me, but at the same time oblivious to the strange reaction her guests had had.

"Excuse me, this is a joke, right?" I knew that raspy, disgusting voice. It was Lord Pennington, who, sitting in a huge chair, questioned me with a cigar in his right hand.

"No, it's not a joke," Ada replied, angry by the tone he had used.

"Oh, thank goodness, because if it is, your friend would be a lousy comedian," said the old man.

"What does it mean?" I interjected, feeling my chest burn with fury. I could accept a criticism from anyone but I would never let anyone make fun of my art.

"I mean, you will not wait for people to read your poem and take it seriously."

"Lord Pennington," Ada was speaking again, and from the shine in her eyes, I knew she had had enough of the old man, "I've been wanting to say this to you since dinner: fuck off."

The rest of the guests was surprised and Arthur, who had fallen asleep in the chair, jumped, startled. Thomas kept his blue eyes on me but they didn't tell me anything. Unlike Ada, I didn't know if he liked my poem or not; if he thought the same as Lord Pennington, or not.

"Mrs. Thorne, I understand that you are offended by my words, but your friend should be receptive to criticism if she is going to start publishing her works," the old man tried to excuse himself, far from feeling offended.

"I listen" I said, getting ahead of Ada, who was about to insult him again. "Tell me what you have to tell" and I prepared myself to take the hit.

"The poem is vulgar, and if I had read it in a magazine without knowing it was yours, I would have thought the author was a cabaret girl," he attacked, and I assumed he was taking revenge for what had happened at the table. "Although, now that I think about it, I've made a mistake, ” he said suddenly. "I don't know you at all and I don't know why I have assumed your profession. Are you a cabaret girl, Miss Westerling?”

"I'm not" I felt my heart was going to jump out of my chest "Did you expect me to be?" I added wryly and forgetting any trace of shame. The guests was whispering again.

"We're not talking about me," he excused himself and smiled disgustingly. "I guess you are not married and never was. That makes sense".

"May I know why it makes sense?"

"Who would want to marry a woman capable of writing such a thing?" Lord Pennington laughed. "What man would want to hold the hand of a woman whose poems make it clear that thousands have passed through her bed?"

"You bastard…!" Ada pounced on the old man and the last thing I saw before I started running, overwhelmed by the humiliation, was that Polly stopped her just as she was trying to slap Lord Pennington.

I left the living room without knowing where I was going. My feet went down the long hallway and as I walked away from the scandal, I approached a huge glass door that led to a balcony.

The night received me clear and full of stars. The moon in the sky filled each corner with its light. Looking at the wide and infinite lands of the Shelby, I allowed myself to cry. I had been resisting the urge to cry since dinner and I hated myself for that. I had to be stronger and tolerate shame better because it was during that gala dinner that I realized that the place I was getting into was horrifying: very few knew the value of a woman's art.

"Miss Westerling?"

I immediately recognized the voice behind me and got a chill. With a desesperation that even now I can't understand, I wiped my tears away and looked over my shoulder. There was Thomas Shelby, his hands in his pockets, walking toward me with a slow stride and a calm expression.

"I'm sorry," I said, avoiding looking him in the eye. He was already in front of me.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"I've ruined your sister's gala dinner ..."

"It was Lord Pennington who ruined it," he stated flatly. "Don't worry, Arthur already put him in his place".

"Arthur?" I asked, confused. I didn't know what Ada's other brother had to do with all this.

"He punched him".

"Oh…"

"Lord Pennington won't annoy you again," he assured me and reached for something in the inside pocket of his jacket. He took out a silver cigarette case that shone down under the moon. "Do you smoke?"

"Sometimes," I replied, and perceiving that my answer was not enough, I added: "I only smoke when I need it."

"I think you need it now."

Thomas opened the cigarette case and allowed me to choose a cigarette. There were only three left and I knew I was dealing with a chain-smoker. When I took one, he did the same and when I put the tobacco to my lips, he lit it for me with his lighter.

We spent a couple of seconds without saying anything, concentrating on smoking and listening to the sounds of the night.

"Can I ask you something?" I needed to get rid of a question.

"Of course"

"What did you think of my poem?" I asked

I saw him raise his eyebrows and look at the landscape. I did not think that my question had surprised him but he did not know what to say.

"I'm not a man of poetry," he confessed, "but I liked your poem."

"Really?" At that moment, I was surprised. I hurried to speak before he could say anything. "What did you like?"

He took a few seconds again before answering.

"What I liked the most was that you wrote it," he brazenly blurted out, but far from trying to flirt with me. I opened my eyes wide and puffed on my cigarette. At my reaction, Thomas let me see a half smile; It was the first time that night that I had seen him smile. "No one would imagine that a woman like you would be able to write such things".

Again I felt the weight of the stigma on my shoulders and I remembered that I was dealing with a man who, saving the differences, belonged to the same circle as Lord Pennington.

"I see," I said with some upset.

"Don't be confused" Thomas read my thoughts. "That's not a bad thing. It just isn't normal and that's why I liked it".

"Looking at your profession, your family, and the house you own, I daresay you are quite normal," I attacked, still somewhat hurt by his words. Thomas had tried to make them sound nice but to my ears there had been nothing but questioning.

I was surprised to hear him laugh gutturally. Now, in addition to being weird, I was a comedian, and suddenly I became all the insults that Lord Pennington had bothered to tell me. What did I need to say for Thomas Shelby to consider me a cabaret girl? I snorted.

"You don't know me, Miss Westerling."

"Neither do you, Mr. Shelby," I said.

"It's true, I don't know you either but I would like to know you" he blurted out and took a final puff on his cigarette "Do you have any more poems I can read?"

Thomas dropped the butt to the ground and stepped on it as I processed his words. In half a second he went from teasing me to flirting with me and that made me lose my temper. I looked him in the eye and he held my gaze. In his expressionless face, I noticed again that particularity that caused me to drop the wine.

"I have written many poems," I was very confused.

"Could you get them to me one of these days? My offices are in Small Heath".

A million doubts settled in my mind. The man in front of me was extremely seductive but he was married. At the same time, he invited me to spend time with him in such an ambiguous way that I could not be offended, because if I assumed that he did it believing that he wanted to sleep with me, he would defend himself claiming that he only wanted to read my poems. Thomas was very smart and at that moment I understood in a way how he had climbed so fast socially and economically.

"I'll try to be there next week if I can, but I promise nothing," I said, trying to detach myself from any kind of commitment.

"Will you be busy?" Thomas asked sarcastically. "I thought you didn't have a job ."

Just as I was about to answer him, Arthur appeared at the door that led to the balcony. He was disturbed but when he saw Thomas with me, he simulated calm.

"Tom, here you are" Arthur turned to his brother and spoke into his ear. I felt uncomfortable at the sudden secrecy.

"I have to leave you, Miss Westerling," Thomas said to me. "You should go back to the living room. Ada must be asking for you. Arthur, Lord Pennington already gone, right?"

"Yes," the man replied curtly.

"I think I should go, too," I said. Perhaps it was finally time to go home. "I shouldn't even have come,” I added quietly, but the Shelby brothers managed to hear me.

"Stay a little longer," Thomas said before starting to walk away with Arthur. "I'll be waiting for you next week. And finish that cigarette. If you stay too long on this balcony, you will catch a cold".

* * *

*******

* * *

He had only two paragraphs left to finish the diary's entry when Lizzie entered the room and stopped dead in her tracks to stare at him in bewilderment. Tommy closed the diary knowing the interrogation that was coming to him.

"What do you do?" His wife asked.

"I was reading"

"And what do you read?"

"Does it matter?”

"No, it doesn't". Lizzie went to bed, lay down, and covered herself with the sheets. "Turn off the light when you're done.” She was still angry and it was obvious.

Like so many other times, Tommy did the exact opposite of what was demanded of him, and instead of turning off the light and forcing himself to sleep, he stood up and began to dress. Lizzie had realized this and tried to ignore it as much as she could until she saw him leave the room.

"Where are you going?" She asked, raising her head a little.

"I’m going to my study," Tommy replied. "I should never have left".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thanks for reading!  
> I wasn't sure whether to write the poem or not, since I'm very bad at poetry but at the same time, it was necessary because Olivia is a poet and the chapter makes a lot of reference to her work.  
> I'm not THAT happy with the result lol and the worst thing is that it's translated (as I said in the Prologue, English is not my native language, so if you see any grammar mistakes I would appreciate you told me).
> 
> I hope you liked it. Comments and kudos are appreciated :)


	5. Witness

"Now, tell us what you know!" Arthur demanded with his foot on the man's chest.

"I already said I don't know anything!"

"You lie!"

Arthur pounced on the poor bastard again and hit him three times in the mud. Tommy heard the jaw being broken.

"I don't know anything ... please," the man sobbed and covered his face with the hands. "I don't know… any Olivia…" He said as best as he could.

Tommy let out all the cigarette smoke from his lungs and closing his eyes, he prayed for patience. If it were up to him, he would put a bullet in that bastard's forehead right there, but unfortunately he couldn't kill him: he was the only witness for Olivia's death.

Tommy approached the man, who still had Arthur on top of him, and squatted. From his watch pocket, he took a small photograph of Olivia that he had stolen from her purse when she was still alive, and placed it in front of the man's eyes.

"Take a good look at her," Tommy said calmly. "You really don't know her?"

"No…"

"She and I happened to meet there casually." Tommy pointed to the brick house across from them, the same house where Olivia had been murdered a month ago. "You were coming back home drunk when you heard a shot inside that building. Did you see someone go out?"

"I ... I already said no ..." The damn bastard spat blood and a premolar.

"Are you sure?" Tommy insisted.

"Yes. I was very drunk and ... when I heard the shot ... I ran"

"Okay"

Pushing Arthur back, Tommy unsheathed the revolver with impressive speed and without thinking twice, shot the bastard's head off. His brother jumped up immediately. A trail of blood mixed with the mud ran between the cobblestones.

"God, Tom, why the fuck do you never tell me when you're about to shoot?" Arthur was greatly disturbed.

"If they find out I'm going to kill them, they'll get nervous," he said.

"Wait, what do we do with the corpse?"

"Leave it there, someone will find it."

The Shelby brothers got into the car and before taking the wheel, Tommy took off his gloves. It was cold and the overcast sky predicted a storm. He opened the glove box and took Olivia's diary from it.

"What's that?" Arthur asked.

"One of Olivia's diaries."

"What?"

"Ada brought them to me a couple of weeks after her death," Tommy explained, looking through the pages. "Do you remember the gala dinner for Ada’s magazine?"

"The night we killed a Lord?" Arthur asked sarcastically. "Of course I do remember it." His brother warmed his hands with his breath. His knuckles were still covered in blood.

"It was the night I met Olivia and at the same time, the night the fascists swore to destroy me." The reminiscence made him feel a huge self-rejection. Polly was right: the fascists had pulled the trigger, but it was him who had killed Olivia.

"We shouldn't have killed that old man." Arthur said "I told you it was a mistake".

"Lord Pennington had to die." Tommy stiffened and crumpled the sheets of the diary unconsciously. "Without him, Mosley lost a lot of supporters". He tried to convince himself that what he had done had not been a huge stupidity.

"Ada spent days without speaking to us because we screwed her bloody magazine" Arthur shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat "and because she discovered that you never really supported her with her project, but you pretended to do it to bring Lord Pennington closer to us".

"If we didn't kill him in my house, we could never have disappeared the body."

"And Olivia gave us the perfect opportunity," Arthur added. "If the old man had not been a scumbag with her, I would never have punched him and, therefore, we would never have accompanied him to his car with the excuse that he had to go home. Did Olivia ever know about all this? Did she know that she was an indirect participant in a murder?" His brother wanted to know.

"No," Tommy said. He felt a pressure in the chest when he knew that he had dragged her into that shitty situation.

"Let's go, Tom." Arthur was very nervous about how calm he looked, but, ignoring his brother's anxiety, Tommy looked for the next entry in the diary. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I read".

"Now?"

Tommy did not reply. From the sky, fine drops began to fall, which soon became a downpour. A couple of meters from the car, the corpse of the man whose words had been useless to him, was soaked, and the rainwater swept the rivers of blood that flowed from the bullet hole.

Striving to ignore his brother's heavy breathing, Tommy began to read.

* * *

*******

* * *

_April 7, 1931._

It's almost midnight and I just got back to my room. Concerned about how silent Ada was during dinner, I waited for the children to go to sleep and began to investigate the reason for her strange attitude. Finally, and after much insistence, she broke down in tears and confessed to me that the magazine had been canceled since all those who had initially promised her their support, had left the project as a result of the strange disappearance of Lord Pennington.

Lord Pennington and his chauffeur were last seen after leaving Thomas Shelby's mansion. Apparently, and according to the hypotheses handled by the police, they were intercepted halfway by a group of communists, since the support that Lord Pennington provided to the British Union of Fascists was well known.

It breaks my heart that Ada's project was frustrated by something that has nothing to do with her. It is true that the rest of the guests did not like the fact that Arthur, her brother, beat the old man up, but why did they have to abandon her like that?

Ada apologized to me in a thousand ways, believing that it would affect me not to see my poem published, when in fact, she doesn't know how much it relieves me. Obviously, I told her not to worry and I did not express my true feelings to her, nor did I tell her that I went to Small Heath today and I was with Thomas.

This morning Ada was in a hurry since little Beth had an appointment with the doctor, so she said she didn't think she could drive Karl to school. I offered to drive him to school and she thanked me, saying I could borrow her car since Polly would pick her up.

I dropped Karl off at school and headed to Small Heath with my heart pounding. I brought my notebook of poems with me, but it was not the fear of being judged again that had me almost paralyzed, but to meet Thomas Shelby once again.

I felt the adrenaline rush through my body as I entered damp, gray streets. Since the gala dinner, I hadn't stopped thinking about him. Thomas Shelby aroused in me an accumulation of mixed emotions: he caused me curiosity but at the same time fascination. He caused me a certain fear and at the same time he seemed extremely attractive.

I stopped the car as I identified Shelby Limited Co.'s offices. Upon entering the building, I had to climb several stairs and upon reaching Thomas' office reception, I noticed that it was empty. In front of me, a double wooden door remained hermetically closed. Dubiously, I knocked a few times and it was upon hearing footsteps on the other side that I began to regret whatever I was doing. Although it was clear to me that I was going there only to deliver some poems, the guilt hit me when I surprised myself wanting a married man.

The door opened and I could finally see Thomas's face.

"Miss Westerling," he greeted me. He looked out of place "I wasn't expecting you".

Hearing him say that, I sensed that shame washed over me. He may have already forgotten that he had invited me there.

"You told me..."

"I remember what I told you," interrupted Thomas, "but I didn't think you would come. Come in, ”and he stepped aside so I could go into his office.

That place described him perfectly. The dark tones predominated and not even the faint sunlight that filtered through the half-raised blind could attenuate the shadows. Everything in that office smelled of him: his cologne, tobacco, and Irish whiskey. I was immediately overwhelmed by his presence as it was in every corner, and when I felt his hand on my back, I trembled.

"Have a seat," he said.

I sat down and he did the same on the other side of the desk. I was too tense and I was aware of it when moving in the chair I noticed a small cramp in my calf.

"I have come to bring you my poems," I explained and placed my poor notebook on the polished wood. "I hope they are to your liking, ”I added.

"I’d be happy to read them. A drink?" Thomas pointed to a small table where he had several bottles of alcoholic beverages.

"Mr. Shelby, it's nine in the morning ..." I tried to sound as polite as possible.

"A person reproached me the same thing a few years ago," he said, and the memory made him seem quite amused. "I admit that my hours are not very normal. A cigarette?" Now he was offering me a cigarette, but before I could say anything, he added, "Is this one of the situations where you need a cigarette?"

"What do you mean?" I narrowed my eyes.

"You're stiffer than a statue," he observed, and that made me more nervous. "I would ask, but I think I know why".

"And why is that?" I took a cigarette. After all, he was right. He lit my tobacco as he did that night on the balcony.

"My sister doesn't know you are here, does she?"

Apparently my surprise was so obvious that it caused him to smile a little. I tried to hide it by puffing on the cigarette, thinking about what to say. Then I cursed myself. I did not have to give explanations of any kind.

"No, she doesn't know," I said.

"Ada is a good woman, Miss Westerling, but you already know that," he said. “Wouldn't you suspect if a good woman like Ada is trying to get you away from me?”

"She's not trying to get me away from you," I lied. "Would she have reasons to?"

"Oh, there are many reasons," Thomas said and took his glass of whiskey. "For example, Ben Younger died because of me".

At the time, I didn't bother to contain my surprise. I opened my eyes wide as I tried to process Thomas' words. Ben Younger had been Ada's lover for a time and was the father of little Beth. He had died in an IRA bombing in late 1929, or at least, that's what Ada had told me.

His death had hurt her much more than she had dared admit, because that night, after learning about poor Ben's tragic death, Ada called me on the phone and we talked for an hour and a half. I know what hurt her the most was the fact that the child in her womb would never know their father.

"Ben Younger was killed by the IRA," I said, as if my words were going to change reality.

"Do you know where the attack that ended Younger's life was?" He ignored what I had said and asked me that question. Seeing me shake my head, he continued, "Here, on the sidewalk of my offices." Thomas stood up and went to the window to look outside. "If only that man hadn't come here ..."

"Is that why you blame yourself? Because Ben's car exploded in front of your window?" I interrupted, pretending to be an idiot. Somehow, I needed him to stop talking.

Thomas turned around and looked at me. I was aware that in his story there was much more than what he was telling me and what Ada told me at the time. I didn't want to know anything else. The sudden enrichment, the political career and the contacts were proof enough to understand that in front of me I had a man with more secrets than truths and a friend who, being part of that reality, tried to protect me from him.

I wanted to get out of that office. I needed to get out of there, not because I was afraid of Thomas Shelby but because I was afraid of falling in love with him.

"Ada once told me that I break everything I touch," Thomas snapped after a long and rugged silence in which we did nothing but look at each other. "What do you think about that?"

"I don't know you well enough to have an opinion, Mr. Shelby," I said, and he snorted, a gesture that ranged from mockery to sadness.

"If you knew me, I am sure you would have a very well-formed opinion." He returned to his seat and sighed with a wave of his hand. "Well, are you going to recite one of your poems to me?"

"What?" The question and the abrupt change of attitude disturbed me.

"Since you came all the way here, you could recite me one of your poems," he explained. "Or are you thinking of leaving?"

"I don't want to make you waste any more time ..."

"Don't worry, I don't have much work," Thomas shrugged.

I sighed in defeat and put the cigarette in the ashtray. I figured out the sooner I fulfilled that man's wishes, the sooner I could get out of there, so I took my notebook and opened it. I searched among my works for a poem short enough so that my torture did not extend too long but at the same time, long enough to prolong his attention on me.

_If you have a secret,_

_I'd rather you tell me in bed._

_Because there is no more discreet comrade_

_than with whom the pillow is shared._

_If you fear someone,_

_I'd rather we plot in bed._

_Because there is no better crime executed_

_than the one planned between the sheets._

_If you hate_

_I'd rather you release your hatred in bed._

_Because there is no greater rancor_

_than loving someone who doesn't love you._

"I liked this better than the one you recited during the gala dinner" he confessed. "Why don't you publish this one instead?"

"This one is much more unashamed..." Suddenly, I felt naked. Every time I let someone know my art, I perceived as if my most vulnerable side was in sight.

"So? What's the problem? Thomas asked nonchalantly. It was obvious that in the face of his privileged and masculine vision of the world, publishing such a poem did not pose any risk.

"I'm trying to make a living out of this, Mr. Shelby," I wanted to make him understand. "If the first time I publish in a magazine I do it with one of my most unashamed poems, there will be no publisher that wants to work with me. And I don't plan to live on Ada for the rest of my life".

I saw him scrutinize me with unconvinced eyes and took the glass of whiskey once more. At that moment, he stopped looking at me to stare at the amber drink.

"I don't want to be the one to say it, but do you really think that you will be able to make a living out of poetry?"

It was as if a cold water bucket was thrown at me, but I already knew that feeling. Countless times in my life, many different people had told me that there was no possibility of make a living out of poems, that it was a nice way to channel my emotions, but I could not pretend to pay all my bills with a couple of verses.

"No, I don't think so," I confessed, as I had confessed thousands of times before, "but most of the time, I like to imagine that I do," I said. "If I were constantly reminding myself that poetry will be useless to me and I'm destined to be a simple salaried woman, I wouldn't be able to write a thing"

He raised an eyebrow almost in fascination.

"Miss Westerling, have you ever been told that you are very brave?"

As I have bothered to emphasize, I know very little about Thomas Shelby and, of all the words that could come out of his mouth at that time, I never imagined that he would call me "brave".

"No. In fact, this is the first time” I admitted. The cramp in my calf returned. The muscles in my body were succumbing due to anxiety.

"I'm going to propose something to you." Thomas leaned both elbows on the desk and was therefore closer. "Work for me."

"Excuse me?"

"You must have noticed that I have no secretary. The one I had, quited the day of the IRA bombing and since then, no other woman has dared to work here" I said nothing, so he continued. "You know to read and write, and although I have only seen you writing in your own handwriting so far, it won't be difficult for you to learn to use a typewriter..."

"I know how to use a typewriter," I interrupted. His proposal was making me uncomfortable "I used one at the factory".

"Even better. You can use the typewriter to write poems in your spare time, it won't bother me" he assured me "Do you know how to prepare coffee? Tea?

"Mr. Shelby," I tried to get his attention, "I don't think you're aware of the commitment you're putting me into."

"Why do you say that?"

"Ada…"

"I thought Ada wasn't trying to get you away from me." he didn't allow me to make an excuse, which we both knew was going to be a lie.

I took a big breath of air and he looked at me. Beyond Ada, beyond his dark side, there was only a reason why I didn't want to work for Thomas Shelby: the way he had heard me recite the poem, the attention he paid at me and the genuine pleasure he showed when I finished reciting, made my world tremble under his feet much more than it had already trembled during the gala dinner. After Ada, he was the first person who I perceived sincere about my art and considered the fact of loving my poetry, an act of bravery and not a childish dream of a stupid girl unaware of reality.

_"He is married, you've already seen. And he's also an asshole. I tell you this because he's my brother and I know him",_ Ada had said to me a couple of days ago, knowing that Thomas would somehow manage to get into my heart.

How willing was I, Olivia Westerling, to spend hours with a man who met all the necessary requirements to make me believe in love again? As chaotic as it was. As turbulent as it was.

Was I ready to sacrifice everything once more?

"I'll take the job".

* * *

*******

* * *

"Tom, someone's coming." Arthur's voice made him stop reading.

Tommy looked out the window and in the rain he saw a woman running. With old heels splashing in puddles of dirty water, he saw her approach the corpse and stare at it for a couple of seconds. Immediately, she looked around for the culprits of such an act and found the car in which Tommy and Arthur were.

Arthur babbled confused when he saw the woman walked away peacefully as if nothing had happened.

"What the fuck just happened?"

"Do you know who the man I killed was, Arthur?" Tommy was convinced that cocaine was rotting his brother's brain. "He was the drunkard of Mr. Connors. Do you remember his wife, the bird freak? She appeared a couple of years ago at the Garrison with some dead birds, which had been killed by him".

"Fuck…"

"Yes, you beat him up back then and that's why he was so terrified when we found him this morning." Tommy stroked his temples. "I suppose he must have imagined that we found out that he killed his wife's birds again, which she named after us".

"Mr. Connors happened to be the witness to Olivia's death?"

"He wasn't, you already saw. He didn't know anything,” Tommy explained. "And upon finding the body and seeing my car, Mrs. Connors assumed that I actually shot her drunken and violent husband to rid her of him"

"And why did you kill him, then?" Arthur questioned, still stunned by the coincidence. Small Heath was smaller than he thought "The son of a bitch didn't know anything about Olivia and you're not very fond of birds, Tom".

"I don't know," Tommy said after a couple of seconds of silence.

He had killed him out of anger because the only person able to give him the information he needed was such a useless piece of shit. He had killed him because, being the coward Mr. Connors was, he had chosen to run".

"Do you think Olivia wrote in her diaries who she met the night she died?"

"I don't know," Tommy repeated. "I'm just reading her first diary".

"Wouldn't it be easier to read the last one first to see if there are any clues?"

"I need to read them in order."

"Why?"

"Because I need to know how far I was able to lie to her and put her in danger." Tommy felt that his patience was running out. "I already told you, the main culprit behind her death is me. Just as it happened with Grace".

"They knew who they were falling in love with, brother" Arthur said, carefully.

"For now, Olivia has only a suspicion," Tommy closed the diary. "Do you remember Mrs. Orwen?"

"The secretary you had before Olivia?" Arthur looked alarmed. "Did you kill her too?"

"No, I fired her," Tommy said quickly. His brother's stupid conclusion angered him. "I fired her the day after the gala dinner because I planned to hire Olivia if she came by my office. I took advantage of her need for a job to keep her close to me. I told Olivia that it had been a long time since I'd been able to get a secretary. I lied to her”.

"Anyone in your place would have done the same."

"Anyone in my place would have tried to push her away because it was safest." Tommy left the diary in the glove compartment as he struggled to contain the anger that was boiling inside him. He started the car's engine. "We're leaving".


	6. Facing the void

Grace's silhouette appeared from behind the smoke emanating from the ashtray. Tommy blinked a few times, confused.

"You miss her, don't you?" The ghostly voice seemed as sweet as ever. Dizzy and perplexed, Tommy nodded. "Olivia loved you. She still loves you."

"What about you, Grace?" He had to ask, and squeezed the small bottle of laudanum in his right hand. "Do you still love me?"

Grace smiled but didn't utter a word and that silence hurt him as much as a stab in the chest. He coughed when he realized he was drowning in imaginary blood.

"Remember, you can still meet her," Grace said, circling his desk until she was finally at his side and stroked his shoulder fondly. It was a hallucination, he knew, but it felt very real. The voice and the touch were there. "Whenever you want, you can jump the bridge. You can pull the trigger. You can… ”Grace took the hand with which he held the laudanum, “drink whatever it takes to sleep forever. You'll sleep, Tommy,” the ghost said. "You will sleep well as when you slept with me or Olivia".

 _< < Please, Disappear >>_, he begged Grace in his mind.

He closed his eyes tightly and clenched his fists. The desperation to get rid of that torment was such that he broke the laudanum bottle into a thousand pieces and the crystalline liquid, mixed with the blood of his wounds, spilled onto Olivia's diary, blurring part of her writing. Between curses, he pushed the notebook away and pushed his chair away from the desk, looked at his palm and saw how small pieces of glass had embedded themselves under his skin.

"You're injured!"

The exclamation surprised him. Grace was gone but now, in front of him, was Olivia. It was the first time since her death that he hallucinated with Olivia. She wore the pearl-colored dress he had given her, the patent leather shoes, and a bullet hole in her forehead. He did not know why she dressed like that and why he imagined her with the wound that took her life away. He had never seen her corpse.

"Who did this to you? Who?" Olivia wanted to know. She was shocked and was repeating a dialogue that Tommy knew very well. "I'll call the police!"

"Don't call the police," Tommy replied. That same phrase had been said to her a couple of months ago, when she was still alive.

"What...?! Why?!"

"The police can't find out about this. And you know why." Tommy said.

Olivia lost all traces of expression on her face and remained serious. That made him somewhat amused because, the time she had found him wounded in his office, she had been far from indifferent and had continued to insist on calling the police. Her reaction, so opposite to the one she'd had in real life, was further proof that his hallucinations were nothing but bullshit.

"I ruined your diary, Ollie," he suddenly confesed. "Although the entry is still readable. What do you say? Do I start reading it?"

"You never asked my permission for anything, and now you're asking my permission to read my diary?" Olivia crossed her arms and looked certainly annoyed.

"I do it because you're dead and you won't be able to slap me," Tommy attacked intelligently. "Your slaps were dangerous. More dangerous than Polly's."

"When you die, I'll make sure to greet you with a slap" the hallucination attacked.

"And where will you receive me?" Tommy asked. "In Heaven or Hell?"

"You know very well where, Tom. In Hell."  
  


* * *

*******

* * *

_April 13, 1931_.

After shirking responsibility for several days, this morning I had to tell Ada that today I was starting to work as her brother's secretary. Needless to say, she did not like the news. At first, it seemed like a bad joke and she frowned at me as she put jam on her toast; When she realized I was serious, she huffed in disappointment and dropped the toast on the plate.

"Olivia, I told you ..."

"I know what you told to me," I interrupted, annoyed. Ada often forgot she was not my mother. “He is married and an asshole. I have checked both things," I said, holding back the surprise my own words caused me, "but I need money, Ada. Even more since the magazine has been canceled".

Bringing up the subject of the magazine was not a good idea. Ada stood up in fury, leaving me, Karl, Beth, and their nanny, surprised. I stood up also and followed her into the kitchen.

"I'm not going to sleep with him," I whispered once we were both alone. I didn't want the nanny to hear us.

"Are you sure?" Ada teased me "Every woman who gets my brother’s attetion, ends up, sooner or later, in his bed. Without exception. It doesn’t matter if they are spies of the Crown, millionaire widows, communists, aristocrats ... why do you think that with you it would be different?”

Her words hurt me, but they were necessary. For an instant, I felt like a teenager who discovers that the boy she likes has a questionable reputation in matters of the heart. It was not that I hadn’t imagined or supposed it, due to the man who Thomas Shleby was, but her sister confirmed that to me, adding truth to what until then had only been a theory.

"I would say: why wouldn't it be different with me?" I questioned after a few seconds. "Your brother is married and knows that I am your friend. He wouldn't take the risk..."

"God, you have no fucking idea who Thomas Shelby is." Ada didn't let me finish. The language she used when she was angry was intimidating.

"So tell me who he is," I shrugged and waited anxiously for an affirmative answer. "Maybe that way you can convince me to stay away from him."

"You don't understand." My friend stroked her forehead in defeat. "I don't have to convince you of anything, you're an adult and independent woman. I'd hate to limit you in your decisions and you know it. I don't want you to think I do it because you owe me something." She sighed. "Just be careful. Tommy has had a thousand lovers but I have only seen him in love twice; every other woman received from him a broken heart."

I would be lying if I said that my desire to work with him did not falter at the time. Ada knew me and knew what I was beginning to feel but I couldn't say for sure if the same thing was happening to Thomas. His reactions had seemed too sincere for his interest to be limited to sleeping with me a few times and then rejecting me, but I couldn't rule out that possibility, either.

"The blonde woman and Lizzie, right?" I asked. I was genuinely curious about Shelby's lovers.

"Lizzie?" My friend was puzzled. "No, of course not. Tommy loved an Italian girl, when he was very young, and Grace, who was his first wife."

Grace. That was the blonde woman's name.

"What happened to Grace?"

"She died," Ada said simply, and was suddenly in a rush to return to the dining room.

"Of sickness?" I insisted and followed Ada in her footsteps when she left the kitchen.

"No," realizing I was following her, Ada stopped and turned to face me. She was sick of my questions. "She got killed" Ada blurted out and a shiver ran through my body. "At what time must you be at Tom's office? You need to know he doesn't like lateness. If you want him to like you, the best thing will be that ...

"Ada, what you are saying hurts me." Although my friend had told me that she would not try to limit my freedom, it seemed that she was trying to do it through her words. "If I wantyour brother to like me, it is because I consider that everything is easier if a boss likes you."

"Why are you fooling yourself, Olivia?" Ada looked disappointed "You can fool whoever you want, but you cannot fool yourself, nor can you fool me. We are talking about my brother and my best friend. I know them both and I know you're falling in love with him" Ada continued when seeing I was not able to refute such truth. "The only thing I'm going to ask you, I already told you: be careful".

The discussion I had had with Ada made me remain absorbed in my thoughts the whole time I was on the tram. When I got to my stop and had to walk, I did it with a light step, holding back my tears. I hated arguing with Ada, and even more so when I knew she was right and, beyond how hurtful it could be, she was only trying to protect me from an impending catastrophe. She had already seen me in love, just as she had also seen me suffer for love; It was to be expected that she would want to avoid martyrdom if the possible cause of it happened to be her brother.

Finally, I arrived at Thomas Shelby's offices. The reception was still as empty and pristine as the last time I was there, and the silence and neatness of the secretariat gave me a cold and unaffected welcome.

Apparently, Thomas heard me arrive, since within seconds, he opened the door of his office.

"Good morning, Miss Westerling," he greeted me. He had her glasses on and a book in his hand. I couldn't help but notice the title: it was Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

"Good Morning. I'm sorry I was a few minutes late. The tram was..."

"I have no idea what time it is." Thomas wouldn't let me finish speaking and shrugged. "The important thing is that it is already here. Do you like your work area?"

I turned my eyes to the modest light wood desk. On top of it sat a typewriter and nothing else. The chair was just as sad and the walls were a raw color similar to that found in hospitals. For my taste, it was too empty and tidy, and lacked personality.

"It has everything I need," I said, trying not to sound ungrateful. "Although I am used to working through the mess, I will get used to it. They are artist hobbies whims, ”I smiled.

"Adapt the place to fit you best," Thomas said, not giving importance to my discomfort. "You can start working whenever you like. Whatever you need, knock on the door,” he said, and went back into his office.

Puzzled by the attitude of my new boss, I approached what would now be "my" desk and sat in "my" chair. Everything was so unknown to me, and I am not saying this simply because I was in a new place, on my first day at job, but because I felt that I did not belong there. I stroked the keys of the typewriter, expecting to find a significant layer of dust, but found them as clean as the rest of the reception.

 _< < And now what? >>,_ I remember thinking.

With some embarrassment, I went to the door and knocked. Thomas Shelby had left me alone just five minutes ago.

"Come in" his voice told me from inside. Opening the door, I saw him sitting in his chair, leaning back, reading his book with a cigarette in his hand "What's it, Miss Westerling?"

"Excuse me but ... what I’m supposed to do?" I was embarrased of asking that question.

"The work secretaries usually do," Thomas said. For a moment, it felt like my question had annoyed him.

"I know, but for that you have to give me tasks to do," I said quickly. I didn't want to sound stupid. "What do you need me to do, Mr. Shelby?"

He stared at me for a couple of seconds, as if thousands of responses had occurred to him but he didn't put any words to them. Then he sighed and closed the book, and I trembled.

"Come in," he said, taking off his glasses, "and take a seat."

As a child who is called by a severe mother, I went to the same chair that I had occupied last week with my notebook of poems in hand, and sat down. I was surprised to notice that I was stiff again with the difference that now I had no idea what I was exposing myself to. Last week, I knew I was going to give Thomas Shelby some poems; At that time, my only certainty was he was going to fire me.

"Olivia," he said suddenly, "Can I call you Olivia? 'Miss Westerling' seems very long to me". I just nodded my head and prayed that my blushing wasn't so noticeable. My name sounded very good with his deep voice.

"Okay." Thomas cleared his throat and put the smoking cigarette in the ashtray. "As my sister's best friend and now my secretary, you'll understand that I've been forced to do a little inquiring."

I did not like that. I did not like the word "inquiring" because it involved searching, looking for something that someone try to keep hidden, and I had nothing to hide. I was sure that Thomas Shelby had many mysteries, which I did not know, but the fact he was a man with interests he was trying to hide, it did not mean that I was in the same position.

I saw him take from his desk a folder similar to the ones that the police use for criminal files and, noticing that it was very close at hand, I was aware that Thomas had been preparing that moment.

"Olivia Francine Westerling, born in London on January 2, 1900," he read aloud. "One day prior, and you were a girl of the new century" said sarcastically and I felt the anger grow inside me.

"Why is this, Mr. Shelby?" I wanted to know, clenching my fists under the desk.

"You can call me Thomas."

"I won't," I said curtly and frowned. "You are my boss and now, from what I see, a detective, too. How did you access to my birth certificate?"

"You had two older brothers, they both died in France." Thomas ignored me and continued reading that damn folder that apparently detailed my whole life. "My brothers and I were also in France. Has Ada ever mentioned this to you?"

"You may be surprised but Ada and I don't talk about you," I lied, and my discomfort worsened when I remembered the discussion with my friend. "Where do you want to go with all this?" I wanted to know.

I am a normal woman and I plan to continue being so. It is true that my life had been shaken by a couple of misfortunes but that was something that had happened to almost everyone during the war.

"You were engaged," Thomas Shelby suddenly said, and the shock of the memory made me look down "...twice."

"We have all failed in love," was all I could say. "Please, I'm going to ask you to stop reading, ”I begged, knowing what was coming.

"With the same man" he finally added.

I looked to his eyes and found them fixed on me with something akin to compassion. That only increased my anger.

"Is it wrong to trust love, Mr. Shelby?" I asked through clenched teeth. I didn't allow him to respond: fury was crying out for me to ask a certain question: "Wouldn't you marry Grace twice if you could?"

For the first time since I met him at that not-so-distant gala dinner, I saw him deeply upset. He was a man who was used to taking charge of the business, the kind of guy who eats the world and never shows his cards, but in that moment, I witnessed how I beat him in his own game. And I felt firsthand how much Thomas Shelby hated to lose.

"How the fuck do you know her name?" He asked, almost in a whisper. His eyes had lost all trace of pity and had turned into two blue daggers.

"Do you think that you are the only one who has the right to do some 'inquiring'?"

I was scared and as I write this, I am scared again. At that moment I think I could hide my fear quite well, because my voice did not tremble and the rage that still had inside me made me stay unconscious enough to not run away from there.

"Ada told you," he said more to himself than to me.

"Now may I ask what is the reason you decided to rummage in my life?" More than curiousity, I had an immense need to divert the conversation to a place where Grace Shelby was not.

"For the same reason that you decided to rummage in mine," he attacked and stood up, putting the cigarette back on his lips. “I'm a man who goes directly to the point but you seem to be one of those kinds of women who like to beat around the bush a lot”.

"I don't understand." I also stood up, so I was at his height.

"You don't understand?" He questioned almost mocking me and leaned against the desk. "Are you going to tell me that you aren’t looking to fuck with me?"

The slap was so loud that it crossed the width of the desk to his face and blew the cigarette out of his mouth. Thomas stood still for a second, his face turned, trying to assimilate what had happened. Me, in the other hand, took a couple of steps back, realizing that I had slapped a dangerous man.

I almost ran out of the office but he didn't stop me, although I could hear him trying to tell me something. When I left the building, I realized that I had left my hat and purse in the office, but I was not going back there. There was no way I was going back there. More than terrified, I was disappointed, and felt so stupid to discover myself believing that there was a possibility that a man like Thomas Shelby would have liked my poems.

It was enough to speak to him for a couple of seconds to realize that he was not a man adept at poetry. He himself had told me that on the balcony. _‘Why do you think that with you it would be different?’_ Ada had questioned and she was right: Thomas had tried to verify what Lord Pennington had put into words. He wanted to know if I was a cabaret girl, find out if I was as daring in bed as I was with the pen in my poems.

I hated myself. As I walked down the empty sidewalks of Small Heath, I hated myself so much.  
  


* * *

*******

* * *

The entry ended there abruptly, and Tommy knew that Olivia had cried while writing it. The disgust he felt towards himself led him to close the diary with something similar to shame.

"I never imagined I'd have hurt you so much," Tommy said to Olivia in front of him. The hallucination was different now: she was wearing the same clothes she had worn that April thirteenth and she no longer had a head wound. "I was a jerk".

"You were," Olivia agreed. She looked sad.

"I always liked your poems. I never lied to you about them and you know it ” he tried to explain.

Olivia said nothing. She stood there, nervous as the first day of job and unable to keep his gaze. Tommy rubbed his eyes; they felt dry.

"Did you ever understand that I made those inquiries because I wanted to know everything about you? Because I needed to make sure I wasn't falling in love with a traitor... once again?"

Tommy turned his attention back to where Olivia was and found that she was already gone. He was alone again in his study, the cigarettes consumed in his ashtray, the empty bottle and the only company of the remorse. He looked at the palm of his right hand and remembered how much it hurt.

Tommy sighed. He was exhausted and she had left him once more.


	7. Poison

_April 17, 1931._

I am trembling as I write this. It's eleven in the morning and Thomas Shelby has just left my room. From the second floor, I hear Ada rebuking him for his behavior while he responds by using silence. I still feel his fragrance on my clothes and I can feel the warmth of his hand on the back of my neck.

God, my pulse is so uneven that I'm afraid the pen will slip and stain the paper. I need to calm down. I'm going to try to calm down.

I think he's gone. Or, at least, he and Ada no longer argue.

I know that the beginning of this entry contrasts sharply with the end of the previous one, so I am going to relate the facts to the best of my ability, praying that my nerves allow me to remember what happened.

I had last seen Thomas on April 13 when I left his office wishing I would never have to speak to him again in my life, being a total victim of disappointment and shame. I never told Ada what had happened because, knowing her personality, I knew she would face her brother, and I didn't want to be a participant or cause of a family dispute. I went home and locked myself in my room for the rest of the day so I could reflect peacefully, and when Ada returned from work, I pretended that I, too, had returned from mine half an hour before her arrival.

I resolved to keep up that charade until the situtation cooled down enough for it to cease to matter and so, at last, confess to my friend that I no longer worked for Thomas. The lie, or rather, the omission of the truth, lasted only three days and it was not because I considered it appropriate to confess what had happened, but because Thomas dragged me into it.

Today at nine o'clock in the morning, I was having my tea in the living room while I watched the babysitter comb Beth's curls, when Ada left her room putting on her earrings and, with narrowed eyes, analyzed me.

"Are you going to work today?" she wondered. She had been asking me that same question for days since it seemed strange to her that I was going to work so late. "We could go together".

"Thomas let me get there a little later today too," I replied.

I didn't know for sure how much longer I could use that excuse, but I had told myself that that afternoon, when I was alone, I was going to think of a new one. Ada and Thomas didn't seem to be in contact lately, but that they crossed paths inside the Company building was a risk for me because, inevitably, Ada would be struck by my absence.

"How considerate ..." Ada was not convinced but refrained from asking too much. Apparently, the discussion we had had was enough to consider saving an opinion. "Well, I'm going to the Company. Tell Thomas that even though he is no longer part of the Directory, he has to attend Directory meetings. He still has sixty percent of the shares, after all".

I thought in Ada's words as she put on her coat and shouted for Karl to hurry up. Once they were both gone, I asked to the babysitter:

"Does Mr. Shelby no longer belong to the Company's board of directors?"

The babysitter, who was a rather friendly old lady and more given to chatting than I first thought, smiled. She had become my accomplice during that charade and was taking too much risk considering Ada could fire her if she caught us.

"He left at the beginning of last year and his cousin, Michael, took his place place," the old woman told me.

"And why does he still have his offices there?"

"Oh, well, Mr. Shelby is still taking care of other matters related to the Company"

The brief explanation was enough for me to know that the “other matters” had little to do with the activity in which the Shelby Limited Co. stood out, so I decided that I would not ask again. I no longer had to be interested in the mysteries of Thomas Shelby, and they had never been of my concern.

When I finished my tea, the babysitter and Beth went for a walk in the park and I went to my room because suddenly I had been struck by the sudden inspiration for a new poem. I don't know how long I was writing and crossing out words, but I think it was enough to frustrate me and thus avoid the sound of the front door opening, in addition to the steps on the stairs.

For a moment I was so stupid as to believe that the babysitter and Beth had come home, even though I hadn't heard the girl's chatter, or the metallic sound of the stroller being taken apart in the hall. Now that I look back on it, it was obvious that the one who had entered the house was not one of those who lived with me: Karl was at school; Ada was working, and Beth and her babysitter had recently left.

I heard the door to my room open behind me but it didn't catch my attention. Convinced that it was the babysitter, I tried to focus on the sad attempt at a poem I was writing. I remember perfectly well that at that moment I was searching the confines of my mind for a word that rhymed with "poison".

"Olivia."

Hearing that voice was like suddenly hearing a spectrum sob. My body immediately stood up and I turned without thinking, as if trying to convince myself that my announcer was not who I thought it was.

But in fact, it was Thomas Shelby. As incredible as it sounds, he was on the threshold of my bedroom door.

"What are you doing here?" I stammered dumbfounded.

"This is my sister's house." He didn't seem very happy to have to explain. "Anyway, the reason I came is to bring you this, ” he said, almost nonchalantly, and let me see what he was holding in his hands.

It was my purse and my hat, which I had left in the secretariat of his office ...  
  


* * *

*******

* * *

"This was what I was looking for." Ada interrupted the reading and straightened her shoulders. "I remember when I first read this, I said, "what the fuck?" I never asked you how you had entered my house at that time. Since when did you have the keys, Tom?"

"I always have the keys to everything and everyone," Tommy shrugged. He was sitting on the one-body sofa in his sister's living room, his elbows resting on his knees and twisting the cloth cap between his fingers. The right hand was bandaged under the glove.

Tommy watched the black cat curled up in Ada's lap. He had forgotten about its existence since Olivia's murder and he regretted that; She had called it "Tommy the Cat" because she said it made her remember bout him: stray, grim and full of wounds. The truth was that, since "Tommy The Cat" had met Olivia, it had shed many of its flaws and was more sociable. Practically the same thing that had happened to him.

"You shouldn't have come that day," Ada reproached him. "Why did you come? You weren't going to apologize".

"And I didn't apologize," said Tommy. At the time I didn't know she was so sensitive and it wasn't until yesterday that I read her diary that I knew how much my words had hurt her,” he explained. "I'm not used to that kind of woman, Ada"

"You still don't tell me why you came," Ada looked at him.

"Keep reading and you'll know."

* * *

  
*******

* * *

It was my purse and my hat, which I had left in the secretariat of his office. He stretched out his arm but did not approach me, perhaps because he expected me to be the one to approach him; perhaps because he didn't want to be frighten me even more.

Although I was still troubled by the fact that he had appeared there, I went to Thomas and received what he offered me. I can't say I denied the possibility that he would take my hand and approach me because I would be lying. I knew he could do it so when I felt his fingers around my wrist I wasn't surprised.

"I waited for you to come the next day," Thomas spoke in a tone of voice that did not allow his feelings to be known. I didn't know if he was angry, disappointed, or indiferente "and the next one, but you didn't come. Today I was also waiting for you to come. A good boss would fire you but you are lucky I'm not a good boss".

"I assumed you would understand that, after the discussion we had, I was quiting," I explained, struggling to maintain integrity. Remembering what he had said made me feel angry again. I forced myself to free myself from his grasp but he did not release me, but took me with more impetus.

"You can't quit."

"What? Excuse me, but I don't even remember signing any contract..."

"Sometimes I wonder if you really are that naive" he interrupted. His expression was grim and for a moment he intimidated me. "I can't read you, I don't know how to read you, and that worries me. Who the fuck are you?" He demanded to know. The attitude he was having towards me was a far cry from the one he showed the other day in his office but it was just as violent in my eyes.

"Olivia Francine Westerling," I provoked him. "You should know better than me. You have access to all my life"

"Thoughts are not documented and that makes me a little nervous," he blurted sarcastically. "What are you thinking about, Olivia Francine Westerling? Are you really a former factory employee with poet aspirations?"

"I know it will surprise you, but some of us are so simple that we have no other lives than what we show," I attacked and tried to free myself once more, but failed again. "And since you are so interested, let me tell you that I'm not a naive or an idiot, I simply choose to keep quiet because I know that sometimes the best thing to do is to keep quiet, not asking questions, not pry into matters that are better hidden; With the latter, I am referring to your family's business".

"You don't snoop on my businesses but you do in my life, eh?" Thomas brought me closer to him. I could feel his breath hitting my nose. "How do I have to feel about that that?"

"If what bothered you was I mencioning ... her, I apologize. I shouldn't have, but I did it so that we were on an equal footing: you know about me, and I know about you". I needed to finish that discussion as soon as possible and leave. The situation and the closeness made my legs tremble.

"Equal footing?" He laughed, and as I did, I could smell tobacco. "You have no idea who I am."

"Then tell me, who are you, Mr. Shelby?" I asked, remembering that Ada had said the same thing to me a couple of days ago.

"A monster".

The kiss was soft and came to me almost tenderly. I was more surprised that it was Thomas Shelby who kissed me like that than the fact that he was kissing me. At first I did not respond and I did it consciously, allowing myself the delight of sensations and giving him the right to do what he wanted. He stopped grabbing my wrist and put an arm around my waist and gently stroked the back of my neck.

I could not resist the temptation. I stroked his face and molded myself to him, following his movements little by little, perceiving everything my senses allowed me. He tasted of whiskey and tobacco, and the skin on his face was smooth since he had certainly shaved that morning. His perfume intoxicated me and I was surprised to be aware of how much I had wanted that moment since I had known him.

"I'm going to London for a couple of days," he said between the kiss. "I have some business in Parliament. Come with me".

"No".

I stopped kissing him and looked him in the eye. My answer had misplaced him. I still felt my body shiver but I did not waste the opportunity to pose a couple of things to that man who, since he met my eyes, knew how to take over my heart. I wasn't going to let him get away with it so easily and the fact that he had gotten a kiss from me was more than valid reason for me to talk to him about certain matters.

He had had the audacity to slip into my room, torture myself with his presence and kiss me, submitting to a will that I was not able to oppose. Such a thing led me to hate myself a little since it went against all my principles and ideals, and even with his arms around me, he had made me break thousands of the promises that I knew to make myself a time ago, the last time I felt in love.

"In your office, you asked me if I was looking to 'fuck' with you," I said. For some reason, he seemed to like hearing me say the word "fuck." "At that moment, I just answered you with a slap, but now, let me do it with words: yes, I want to fuck with you" I felt him take me harder and try to kiss me again. I leaned back "...but I won't for now".

"Why?" He wanted to know. At my rejection, he had frowned.

"Because I hardly know you," I replied. "And by this I don't mean that I'm waiting for you to invite me to dinner or coffee. I know the kind of man you are. I sense the kind of secrets you hide. I need to know everything about you before I fuck with you because I am not ready to suffer again".

"Olivia," he said my name almost purringly and stroked the back of my neck again.

* * *

*******

* * *

"This is very uncomfortable," Ada said, somewhat embarrassed, "and. after this one, I read worse entries"

"Do you want to know what I felt when I kissed her the first time?" Tommy was absorbed in his memories.

"No! Why the hell would I want to know that?" His sister had a disgusted expression.

"Love"

"Oh..." His response had surprised Ada.

"Pretty much the same way I felt when I kissed Grace for the first time in that church," he explained. "After Grace's death I never imagined that I could feel something similar again".

"Why do you say 'pretty much the same way'?" Her sister had been struck by the words he had used.

"They are... were different women. Very different. When I kissed Grace the first time, the Thomas of that moment kissed the woman he believed to be Grace, until he discovered who she really was. When I kissed Olivia, I kissed Olivia. She was always the same, from the gala dinner until the morning of the day of her death, which was the last time I saw her".

Ada moved uncomfortably on the couch and the cat meowed annoyed. Tommy looked at the cat and remembered that the last time he had seen her, Olivia had held the cat in her arms, and when he kissed her, the cat had meowed upset at the closeness between its owner and its namesake.

"So," her sister struggled to change the topic, "you came all the way here to take her with you to London."

"Yes".

"And she not only rejected your proposal, but also rejected your cock." Ada smiled. "That's my Olivia… ” she murmured.

* * *

*******

* * *

He made an attempt to kiss me one more time, and while I didn't mean to shy away from him, Ada's heels running up the stairs made me try to free me. Thomas, for his part, took me even stronger, as if motivated by the fact that his sister discovered us very close together; as if he wanted to make it clear to my friend that he wasn't going to give up on me.

When Ada arrived at my open door, she was not shocked. She was already disappointed, and all she did was stop dead in her tracks to cross her arms, in silence. I know her and I know that she is more dangerous when silent than shouting insults.

"Congratulations, Tom," she was forced to speak as neither her brother nor I said anything. Thomas still held on to me and I stood up simply because I was reloading my weight on him. I was languid. "You got what you wanted".

"What are you talking about, Ada?" Thomas played down her sister's words.

"And you pretend to be an idiot." Ada narrowed her eyes. "Since I have known you, you have always been the same. They tell you not to do something, not to touch something, and you do it or you touch it". I noticed her chin was shaking and then I knew she was furious. "What the fuck are you trying to show? That no one denies Tommy Shelby anything, right?"

I realized then that those two had been talking about me much more than I thought. I knew how important I was to Ada, but until then, the possibility that I might have been for Thomas too had not occurred to me. At least not enough to challenge his sister like that, taking that kind of daring in his own home.

"Olivia is not a thing and she can choose," he said.

Finally, Thomas released me from his arms and I walked away as if there was still the possibility of going back in time and preventing Ada from seeing anything.

* * *

*******

* * *

"How did you know I was at your house?" Tommy remembered that, until then, he had never asked her that.

"Olivia was good at hiding stuff, but I was better at pretending that I hadn't discovered them," Ada said "I did notice that she was not attending the Company. The building is big but I am not an idiot.

"What does that have to do with me? Did you see me leave the building?" 

"No," Ada denied. "Your absence from the board meeting made Arthur go looking for you and couldn't find you anywhere. I wasn't entirely sure if you would come after Olivia but I was suspicious. Call it 'sixth sense' " she cut it off and prepared to continue reading.

* * *

*******

* * *

I know it sounds stupid, but I felt like I had failed my friend. Not only did I find it quite questionable to kiss her brother in the room that she so selflessly allowed me to occupy, but I had also ignored all her advice, knowing that she had given it to me for my own good and not because she didn't want me to become part of her family. I had hidden things from her, lied to her, and now I was facing her, unable to speak.

"Forgive me, Ada." I had to apologize." You have every right to kick me out if you wish, I ..."

"Are you serious?" My friend interrupted. "Throw you into the street so this jerk has the opportunity to take you to his fucking mansion to live with his wife in a beautiful and fucking _ménagè a trois_ relationship?" she attacked in a fit of fury. Her words were loaded with sarcasm. "You haven't forgotten that he's married, right?"

No. I hadn't forgotten, and while I couldn't put it into words at the time, now that I can write it I'll say that when Thomas kissed me, I didn't care. And I don't care.

I just shook my head silently. In response to my denial, Ada sighed in defeat.

"Thomas, come with me," she ordered her brother. "I want to talk to you alone".

Before following Ada's steps, Thomas adjusted the overcoat that I had wrinkled, and looked in his pocket for his inseparable cigarette case. He fixed his eyes on me and my heart skipped a beat. I wished he would kiss me again, and I'm sure if Ada hadn't been waiting for him downstairs, he would have. And I would have too.

"I already told you: I'm going to London tomorrow. I won't be back until Wednesday," he said. "Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" He insisted.

"I'm sure. Even more now” I said, and hearing that, he looked disappointed again.

"Okay. See you on Wednesday in my offices" he said goodbye with a slight bow of the head. "Rest well. And write, ”he added.

As he left, he closed the door and I strode to my desk, as if I suddenly needed to write what had happened to me. And here I am now, waiting in the sudden tranquility that reigns in this house when just a few minutes ago, my existence was disturbed by Thomas, and Ada who ...

* * *

*******

* * *

"The entry ends here" Ada closed the diary. "At that moment, I walked through the door to her room and saw her writing like a crazy woman, hunched over the desk. I thought it was one of her poems and that what she had lived had inspired her, but it wasn't".

"What did you say to her?" Tommy wanted to know.

"I told her that I had had enough of warning her and she could do whatever she wanted." He saw his sister shrug her shoulders but, at the mere memory, anger showed on her face. "I must have been more insistent. If I had been, perhaps today things would be different".

"And I should have listened to you when you called me a couple of days before, after you found out that she was going to work for me," he admitted.

"Was it the same morning you acted like a jerk to her?"

"Yes," Tommy admitted, standing up. "When I got your call, Olivia had already slapped me and left, but I thought the right thing to do was let her tell you what had happened"

"As you see, she never told me." Ada's jaw clenched.

"She was afraid of disappointing you," Tommy tried to defend Olivia.

"No. Olivia knew that whatever she did, she would never disappoint me. What she really feared was that I would take her away from you. Ever since she met you, that was always her biggest fear" Ada stroke the diary nostalgically. "So she always kept Polly and me from knowing too much. Sometimes I wonder, to what extent we were friends ..."

"Ada," Tommy reached out and took her by the shoulders, "Olivia adored you. She always talked about you".

Her sister tried to hold back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes and, as if trying to free herself from the memory, she returned the diary to him.

"Why did you want to read this entry with me?" Ada asked, wiping away a tear that had slipped down her cheek.

"Because I need advice."

"Tommy Shelby asking for advice?" Her sister was surprised and Tommy The Cat, with a meow, also expressed his amazement.

"Olivia never told me about the man she nearly married twice," upon hearing him say that, Tommy witnessed Ada's brows arch. She imagined what he was about to ask her. "And I tried not to ask about him, although my curiosity was eating me away. After Olivia's death, I found out his name, which is ..."

"Andrew Fairfax," his sister interrupted. "Yes, Tom, I know. I met him, unfortunately".

"It turns out, to my surprise, that he is a very active member of the Labour Party in London. My party, ”he explained.

"I knew it too." Ada shrugged. "So?"

"Maybe he can tell me something."

"Tell you something about what?" Ada's nerves were beginning to twitch.

"About Olivia's death." Tommy watched his sister snort impatiently. "The two men she became involved with were socialists. The fascists may have located Olivia thanks to me, but they may have already blacklisted her since her relationship with Fairfax ..."

"And so you would free yourself from your guilt, right?" Ada attacked "If you're looking for my go-ahead with meeting Fairfax, you're not going to have it, Tommy. That bastard is despicable and I'm not saying that because he was a son of a bitch with poor Olivia, or because with his rejection she dragged her towards the Shelbys. He is miserable and you will not be able to have a dialogue with him without wanting to punch his face".

"Ada, I need to know the truth."

"Which truth?" she was fed up "You already know the fucking truth! It was Mosley; he ordered her to be killed. Focus on destroying him instead of wanting to start a bloody civil war"

"I will start a war if necessary."

"God…"

"I will send to hell anyone who has been involved in Olivia's death, and I don't give a fuck if I have to kill even the King"

"They're going to hang you" Beyond her anger, Ada looked worried, and in her gaze Tommy noticed that she felt sorry for him. "You will die, Tom".

"Ada," Tommy reached into his jacket pocket and looked for his cigarette case almost desperately, "You know very well that I'm already dead".


	8. Whiskey and Martini

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! I'm sorry it took so long to update but translation is taking me more and more time. Anyway, I hope you like the chapter! :) and thanks for reading!

The bar was crowded when Tommy saw Andrew Fairfax. He was a very tall man, and as he took of his hat, his blond hair sparkled with golden highlights. Until a couple of days ago, Tommy had no idea what the man Olivia loved before him looked like.

Andrew Fairfax was his same age and had also been in France. Condecorated with several medals, he had made a place for himself in London's high society, although he was originally from Whitechapel, just like Olivia, and a friend of her brothers.

The man looked around and Tommy did not do anything to attract his attention, but waited to be find. As Fairfax approached the table, Tommy noticed the look of displeasure on his face. It was obvious that he didn't want to be there, but he had no choice but to attend; after all, a Member of Parliament from his party wanted to talk to him.

"Mr. Shelby," Faifax greeted him.

“Mr. Fairfax.” Tommy shook the hand of the man who had made his Olivia suffer so much. He couldn't help but feel the burning bile in his throat. “Take a seat, please”.

"I don't know why we met at a bar when we could have met at your office in Westminster." He had just arrived and was already complaining. Ada was right: that guy was a wretch.

"Do you like the Palace of Westminster, Mr. Fairfax?" Tommy asked sarcastically. "Would you like to be a member of parliament?" He attacked.

"Who wouldn't like it?" Fairfax responded to his attack with a haughty smile.

"I know the walls of Westminster seem quite thick but don't trust it, you can easily hear through them."

"I assume, then, that is why we’re metting here," he said. "It's sad that two party colleagues cannot get together to discuss politics in the most democratic place in the Kingdom".

Tommy studied that man for a couple of seconds with narrowed eyes. He could not understand how that bastard had managed to make Olivia fall in love to a point where she had abandoned all traces of dignity. Fairfax was his most exaggerated opposite, not only physically, but also in personality: he seemed to be a disgusting sycophantic, a rat hungry for power and visibility, and had more similarities with Mosley than with him.

"I must confess I lied to you, Mr. Fairfax," Tommy said, witnessing the man raise an eyebrow. "We are not going to talk about politics".

"And what are we going to talk about?" Fairfax looked more offended than surprised. Apparently he considered it disrespectful for someone to waste his precious fucking time.

"We're goint to talk about Olivia."

At the sound of the name, Andrew Fairfax blanched and that was enough to make Tommy's blood boil. The bastard tried to hide it as soon as he was aware that his reaction had been very noticeable and called the waiter with his hand. Then cleared his throat.

"What Olivia are you talking about?"

Tommy's heart clamored to put a clean punch in the face of that idiot, but his brain reminded him that avenging Olivia was more important. The fact that Fairfax was playing fool, pretending that he did not know the woman to whom he had caused so much suffering, caused Tommy to look for a cigarette, exasperated, praying that the nicotine would manage to tame the violence that wanted to sprout from his chest.

"Olivia Westerling, Mr. Fairfax," Tommy forced himself to remind him, with neck muscles tense, and lit the cigarette.

Before Fairfax could say anything, the waiter approached the table, much to his luck.

"A Martini, please," Fairfax asked, settling in his chair. "What do you drink, Mr. Shelby?"

"A whiskey," Tommy said, still staring at that piece of shit with a tie. "Natural and Irish. Did you know that Martini is a women's drink?" Tommy took the opportunity to attack him as he watched the waiter leave.

"I know," Fairfax agreed. "Olivia really likes Martini".

The wretch knew how to return the attack too well and Tommy could not help but smile at thet pathetic situation. He was in a London bar measuring his cock with a stranger and deep down he knew he was doing it because he hated that man.

It was true that Andrew Fairfax had shown he knew how to be a jerk, but beyond that, Tommy was bothered by his simple existence. The fact that Olivia had loved another man before him made him sick, as stupid and irrational as it sounded. And that this man had taken her for the first time and then abandoned her only increased his hate.

"Yes, she liked Martini with lemon" Tommy added, remembering the time Olivia had gotten drunk at the Garrison.

"With plenty of lemon," Fairfax said. "How is she?" he wanted to know.

"She's dead."

Silence sliced through the air as if it were the sharpest of swords. For a second, it seemed as if that table, occupied by two men, had been stopped in time and the only thing capable of reducing the shock the news had caused was the bustle in the bar. Around them, people drank, laughed and chatted; It was a typical London Friday afternoon. In front of him, Tommy had a man whose eyes had filled with tears.

"How…?"

"The fascists," Tommy advanced his reply. "Oswald Mosley, to be more exact."

He saw Fairfax's lips contract and it seemed as if he was suddenly struggling to control a fit of rage. Tommy shook his head: the reactions of that guy seemed extremely false.

"Where was it?"

"Birmingham."

"I didn't know Olivia was living in Birmingham." Fairfax looked confused. "It is quite far from London. What was she doing there?"

"She was living with my sister."

Tommy watched Fairfax babble disoriented. At that moment, the waiter brought the drinks and placed the whiskey glass in front of him and the martini glass in front of Fairfax. The latter did not even notice the presence of the man standing next to him.

"Thank you" Tommy thanked the waiter.

"Your sister? Who is your sister?" Fairfax was still searching for answers that would lessen his confusion.

"Ada Thorne, née Shelby” Tommy explained, sipping his whiskey. Hearing Ada's name, Fairfax seemed to understand a thing or two.

"I met Ada," Fairfax said, and Tommy could tell by the look on his face that they hadn't gotten along very well. "I didn't know her last name was Shelby"

"My sister tries hard to keep her last name hidden," Tommy explained, and the statement sounded strange to Fairfax. That amused him. Londoners had no idea what it meant to be a Shelby. "We're gypsies” he said, unable to hide his mocking tone.

Andrew Fairfax raised the martini glass to his lips and the taste of the drink made him smile wistfully.

"I loved Olivia, Mr. Shelby," the son of a bitch confessed, as if he were talking to a friend.

"For what I know is that she loved you," Tommy snapped. "But it is not clear to me how you could have loved her when you cheated on her and left her for another woman".

Tommy's gaze drifted to Fairfax's right hand and glimpsed the gold wedding ring. He clenched his fists as he imagined that such an ring might have signified Fairfax's marriage to Olivia and thanked, with some remorse, that it was actually due to the advantageous union Fairfax had made with the daughter of a Lord.

"How do you know all that?" Fairfax asked, almost offended. "My private life does not have to circulate within the party. Or was she the one who told you?"

"People are always surprised at my ability to inquire into their lives," Tommy said, remembering the time Olivia had been upset with him for the same reason, "but let me tell you that I only do it when it comes to someone that interests me".

"And why the hell do you interest about me?" Now, the bastard with pretentions of a Lord was playing at being a humble nobody, unworthy of his attention.

"Because I think you can help me avenge Olivia."

"Avenge?" Fairfax swallowed heavily. "I understand that your sister is devastated but ..."

"I'm not talking about my sister, Mr. Fairfax," Tommy interrupted. "The devasted one is me".

Andrew Fairfax took a couple of seconds to analyze his words. First, looked at Tommy, hoping he would add more details to the statement. Then he averted his eyes and fixed them on his Martini, as if the drink were going to provide answers to all his questions, like a crystal ball.

"Did you love her?" He asked the question with some fear because, apparently, he did not know if he was jumping to conclusions.

"I loved her," Tommy simply replied, rejoicing at the wretch's surprise.

"And did she love you back?"

"Yes" Tommy took a drag on his tobacco. Never had a cigarette been so satisfying.

Tommy felt he was fulfilling the revenge Olivia could never carry out: breaking Andrew Fairfax's heart into a thousand pieces.

"Tell me, please," out of nowhere, Fairfax was begging, "did you make her happy?"

"I tried," Tommy confessed, "and I think so. Although I would’ve liked to make her even happier" Tommy was now turning his eyes to his own wedding ring. He had come so close to getting a divorce.

"Glad to hear that." Fairfax sounded sincere. "I already told you that I loved her, but I don't regret breaking up with her. I did it because I had the opportunity of a much more profitable marriage and thanks to it, I am what I am today".

"You talk about the marriage like it's a fucking contract." Tommy was disgusted.

"It's a contract, Mr. Shelby," Fairfax contradicted him. "We’re talking about two people who are going to have to bear each other for the rest of their lives, facing different adversities with the only company of the other. Is it wrong that, over Olivia, who was a lower-class worker in a factory, I chose who is now my wife, the daughter of a Lord, with political ties and a loose life? I chose the option that was best for me." Hearing Fairfax, Tommy refrained from speaking. He was furious. "I know what you are thinking. You think I'm a coward, an idiot, but now I see the wedding ring in your hand and I ask myself: with what authority do you question me if you've already married another woman?"

"I didn't marry another woman," Tommy snapped. "I was already married when I met Olivia".

Hearing Fairfax laugh made Tommy almost rise from his seat. That bastard was playing with fire and Tommy almost didn't give a shit about the political consequences of beating him to death in that bar.

"You're a hypocrite," Fairfax insulted him. "You question me when you already have a ring around your finger ..."

"And I also have a gun." Tommy patted his chest over his jacket, letting the other man know that he was armed.

"Are you going to shoot me here?" Fairfax didn't look intimidated. "What a man poor Olivia loved” he added. "Putting it together, I wouldn't be surprised if she was killed because of you".

Tommy stood up and tossed the cigarette into the ashtray. Andrew Fairfax bounced in his chair, but still watched him defiantly. Tommy noticed a couple of people around looking at them with some expectation and he tried to contain the outbreak of fury.

Then something caught his eye. At the bar counter, not far from where their table was located, he caught a glimpse of the hallucination of Olivia sitting on a stool, a martini glass in her hand and a wide, blood-red coat. The sparkle in her dark eyes conveyed the message she wanted to tell to him: " _Don't do anything stupid, Tom."_

Tommy sat down again, visibly confused, and Fairfax studied him with his eyes. He had already realized that Tommy was not very well in his head.

"May I ask how you expect me to help you avenge Olivia?" Fairfax was forced to speak as Tommy was still troubled.

"I assume you ask that question because you intend to collaborate." Tommy took a long drink of his whiskey. He was thirsty.

"Don't be confused. I have no intention of helping you at all” Fairfax said. "All I want is to redeem myself with the memory of Olivia."

"She'll be grateful to you," Tommy snapped sarcastically. "Well, to begin with, I need you to tell me how well your ties to socialism were known when you were dating her."

"How striking. A man who brags about his access to information and doesn't know something as basic as I was a staunch communist before joining the Labour Party," Fairfax said.

"I tend to avoid knowing too much about the Communists," Tommy explained. "I don't like them."

"I don't like them either," the man in front of him said, shrugging. "I used to like them when I was a starving proletarian and believed that we were all worthy of a certain equality. When I began to have power for myself, I considered that I didn't want to give it to anyone else".

"Pretty hypocritical of you, don't you think?" Tommy attacked.

"As you see, I'm a hypocrite too, Mr. Shelby." Fairfax's words were once again charged with vanity. "The thing is, Olivia was most likely linked to communism because of me, although she was never fond of extremes".

"Do you have grounds to believe that?"

"We were a couple until the middle of 1929. The fascists weren't that organized but they already existed, and many emerged from the filthiest coffers of communism and socialism. My name began to circulate in the slums of London and I received tempting proposals to join their ranks. I refused, and they didn't like that,” Fairfax recounted. "When I decided to leave the communist militancy, I gave Olivia all the documentation that could compromise me in case the fascists got to the power. She was the only person I knew who was not linked to any party."

"You are an idiot." Tommy couldn't believe what he was hearing. "By giving her all that documentation, you made her sign her death sentence".

"I told her to get rid of it," Fairfax excused.

"And you really think she did?" Tommy picked up his briefcase, which was resting on the floor, and reached through the pile of papers for Olivia's diary to throw it on the table. Fairfax's indifferent reaction to the notebook did not catch Tommy’s attention.

"One of her diaries," Fairfax observed.

"Did you know she wrote diaries?" Tommy already knew the answer.

"Of course. I myself gave her several notebooks."

"Then you know that even though Olivia threw the documents you gave her, she most likely wrote about them in her journal," he said. "Olivia had a habit of writing everything down."

"She probably did, yes." Fairfax nodded emphatically. "Never thought about it."

"You never thought about it ?!" Tommy was angry again. "If someone had access to those diaries, linking her to communism would be the first thing they would do. Where the fuck are those diaries?" Tommy demanded, flinging himself slightly across the table.

"At her parents' house, I suppose." Fairfax drank from his Martini.

"Get me those diaries if you don't want your body to be found hanging from Tower Bridge tomorrow," he threatened, and was tempted to draw his gun out.

"Well, get the rope ready, Mr. Shelby, because I can't go to Olivia's house," Fairfax said. “Her parents forbade me entry since I broke their daughter’s heart for the second time. You will have to be the one to go there.”

Tommy leaned back in his seat and stared at the smoking cigarette in the ashtray. He had never met Olivia's parents and did not know if she had ever told them about him. With what excuse would he appear at the house of parents who are still mourning the death of their daughter to rummage through her things? If Ada had agreed to come to London with him, things would be much easier, but he was alone and he was going to have to figure it out on his own.

"Give me the address," he demanded and reached for a pen in the inside pocket of his jacket. He opened the diary, ready to write.

"Are you going to write on the diary?"

"I'm more likely to lose my head than to lose this diary, Mr. Fairfax. Now speak up."

He wrote down what his interlocutor had said on the back cover of the diary as he traced the map of Whitechapel in his mind. He had rarely been there but he knew the place.

Once Fairfax gave him the address, he spoke again:

"I find it strange that I didn't find out about Olivia's death," Fairfax said. "We had acquaintances in common and although her parents now detest me, I was close friends with her older brothers. I was the one who had to write them the letter informing them of their deaths in France. They should have sent me a telegram, at least."

"Your new social position may have taken you far enough away from the ties you shared with Olivia," Tommy said slyly.

"Maybe. But even so ... "Fairfax was not convinced" Where is she buried?"

"I have no idea."

"Didn't you go to her funeral?"

"No. According to my sister, she was buried here in London," Tommy simply replied.

"And she didn't tell you in which cemetery ..."

"No, because I didn't ask." Tommy was beginning to lose patience.

"Mr. Shelby, are you sure she's dead?"

The question hit Tommy with the force with which a sledgehammer would hit him to the skull. He stared at Andrew Fairfax and searched his face for something to say he was teasing him. Fairfax couldn't be serious. There was no way he could ask that question without resorting to irony. Tommy glanced at the bar counter and saw that Olivia was gone. Dread ran through every inch of his body.

"I saw my sister mourn her death," Tommy recalled. "Someone heard the shot. I know she's dead. ”He tried to convince himself but it was too late: doubt had settled in his heart.

"Did you see her body?"

"They wouldn't let me," Polly had stopped him. She had sent him home.

"I see." Apparently Tommy's reaction was so unsettling that Fairfax wanted to dismiss the matter.

"Why would she do something like that?" Tommy had to ask.

"Knowing her, I also find it strange. Beyond her elusive nature, Olivia was… or is, a brave woman. She doesn't run from problems."

"Are you saying I was a problem for Olivia?" Fairfax's words had offended him.

"That only you can know," Fairfax replied, avoiding all responsibility in his words.

But Tommy knew he was. He was a problem for everyone who crossed paths with him and knowing the relationship he had had with Olivia, it was to be expected that she would suddenly find herself involved in matters too dark to face.

She was brave. Tommy had told her after she recited a poem to him, and a million more times when he noticed that she liked it. She had been a woman somewhat unsure of her abilities, anxious about what the future held, and hated being the center of attention. If Tommy got it right, Olivia had plenty of reasons to fake her death.

But what about Polly and Ada? Had they also lied to him?

"She's dead," Tommy repeated aloud. He needed to erase any wild theory from his head.

"When you go to her parents' house, check the surroundings. Don't ask directly because if Olivia is alive they will try to cover for her. And please," Fairfax took a last sip of his martini. "As soon as you know something, contact me. You know where to find me. As much as you hated that I say this, because I have noticed, Olivia was, is and will be the most important woman in my life. I think about her every day. I am a married man, Mr. Shelby, just like you, and a father who adores his little daughter. Yet it comforts me, in a way, to know that I am not the only one bearing the cross of having loved and lost Olivia Westerling."


	9. The board meeting

_April 22, 1931_

This diary has few pages left. That’s why today, when I left work, I went to a stationery store and bought three more notebooks. I have the feeling that I will need diaries to relate everything that this year has prepared for me.

I'm happy. Today I rejoined the Shelby Company Limited and when I got to my secretary’s office, I noticed that the door to Thomas's office was wide open and he was waiting for me. When Thomas saw me arrive he stood up and I went to where he was, not allowing him to go towards me.

"Close the door" he demanded.

I did what he said, although I could perceive that my heart was stirring restlessly in my rib cage. I was aware of what was about to happen and, being honest, I longed for it. I had been looking forward to seeing him again since he said goodbye to me, and I would be lying if I said that somehow I did not regret not accompanying him to London.

Thomas Shelby came briskly over and took me almost violently. Unlike the first time he had kissed me, I noticed in that kiss a significant degree of despair. He clung to the flesh of my hips like a hungry eagle and I couldn't help but jump when I noticed his hands slipping further below what I considered “allowed”.

"I missed you," he confessed, interrupting the kiss with the same brutality with which he had started it.

"I missed you too, Mr. Shelby," I said, teasing him with the distance generated because I still wasn't call him by his first name. At that point, it was no longer a matter of trust, but I was simply doing it to delight in his reaction.

And Thomas' reaction was to scrutinize me with his eyes, somewhat disturbed and restless, but that did not prevent him from devouring my lips again and finally daring to got into my mouth with his tongue. I felt that I was choking on his appetite but I did not complain.

Three knocks on the door were enough for me to fall from Heaven into reality and become as stiff as a stone. Thomas stopped kissing me but didn't let me go and shifted his eyes to the door in front of him with annoyance.

"Who is it?"

"What do you mean, who is it?" I recognized the voice immediately and a chill ran down my spine. "It's your fucking wife. Open up".

Reluctantly, Thomas separated from me. I, on the other hand, had been immobilized, wondering what Lizzie would think when she saw me there, locked up with her husband.

Lizzie's expression when she saw me was just as I had imagined. When Thomas unlocked the door and opened it, she walked into the office believing that there was no one else there. She stopped perplexed when she saw me standing in the middle of the office, agitated and surely very flushed.

"Is something wrong, Lizzie?" Thomas looked at me first and then at her, who didn't take her eyes off me.

"Yes" The woman tried to snub me, pretending that she was suddenly unaware of my presence. "You're running late for the board meeting, and once again your cousin's wife disrespects me in front of everyone".

"I already told you that you give too much importance to what Gina says."

"That fucking whore..." Lizzie stopped her outburst of anger as she noticed me again. "Does she need to be here listening to what we're talking about?" Lizzie asked her husband.

"Olivia is my secretary. Plus, she's coming with me to the board meeting ” Thomas said, putting his hands in his pockets.

The news surprised me more than Lizzie. Technically, it was my second day at work and I didn't know anyone else at this company other than Thomas and Ada. I knew the directory was made up of members of the Shelby family but I hardly knew their names and little else. I rubbed my hands together, victim of anxiety, but said nothing. I could not refuse. After all and beyond all, Thomas was my boss.

"Olivia is not your secretary. She's a friend of your sister who writes poems.” Lizzie insulted me but did not address me. She spoke to Thomas as if I were an object unable to respond to her insult; and at that moment I decided to be that object: it was not convenient for me to argue with a member of the board of directors.

"She's a friend of my sister's who writes poems… and my secretary," Thomas said emphatically.

"At what point did you start hiring people at this company without first consulting with the board of directors? Have you forgotten that you are not part of it anymore?" Lizzie was getting more and more annoyed and the hysteria she let through in her words led me to realize that, in a way, she knew what had been happening in that office before she showed up.

"I started hiring people without consulting anyone because I think the fact of having founded this fucking company gives me the right to do it." Thomas was beginning to lose patience. "And thanks for reminding me that I'm not a member of the board of directors. I didn't feel like going to the meeting after all".

Lizzie snorted furiously and slammed the door out of the office. The scene that had just unfolded in front of my eyes spinned in my mind, generating a lot of doubts but, apparently, Thomas forgot it rather quickly.

"Olivia, make me some tea," he demanded as he made his way to the desk. "I have a headache".

"Mr. Shelby," I said nervously, "aren't you going to the meeting?"

"Should I go?"

"I think so," I answered doubtfully.

Thomas Shelby decided to take advice from an inexperienced secretary for the sake of upsetting his family and attended the board meeting, with me by his side.

Before entering the Meeting Room, the dispute that was taking place within it could already be heard. Two female voices were arguing in unison while another voice, this one male, was calling for tranquility and begging them to calm down. When Thomas entered the room, there was silence and all eyes were on us.

Around that table there were as many familiar faces as foreign to me. Ada, seeing me there with her brother, raised her eyebrows in surprise and blinked a few times. Lizzie crossed her arms and Arthur looked at us both, visibly confused. A blonde woman, my age or a little younger, whose elegance seemed to me similar to those of American actresses, looked me from head to toe and then ignored me; She looked very upset.

"Where the fuck is Michael?" Those were Thomas's first words at the board meeting. He had just arrived and was already fed up with everyone.

"Dancing in the snow," Arthur replied under his breath.

"As you can see, Olivia," Thomas talked to me and everyone there watched us expectantly, "I definitely left this fucking company in good hands," he said sarcastically and sat at the headboard. "Fuck”, he cursed softly.

"Thomas," Lizzie called anxiously, "before you got here, Gina was arguing that we should invest in motion pictures, in California, which seems like reverend idiocy to me."

"Have you been to California, Lizzie?" Gina, who was the blonde woman, teased Thomas' wife. An aura of elegance surrounded her. "Of course not. I doubt that you have ever gone beyond the limits of Birmingham. You have no idea what you're talking about but I don't blame you".

"What you want is for the capital of the company to be invested in your country, isn't it?" Lizzie asked, very annoyed.

"Half of the Shelby Company Limited's capital has been invested in China." Gina shrugged, sipping her cup of tea. "Why not invest the rest in America? Also, unlike the Chinese, this would be a completely legal business".

"Here we go again." Arthur rubbed his eyes and sighed, exhausted.

In a matter of half a second, Gina and Lizzie were back in the agitated state they had been in before Thomas and I reached the Meeting Room. I watched the scene in perplexity, standing at the side of the table, while Thomas lit a cigarette and Ada gave me a look of condolence.

To some extent I understood why during all our years of friendship Ada had avoided telling me too much about her family. They seemed to be very passionate people and without a doubt, they did not get along. I also understood Thomas's need to ignore everything that had to do with the company, at least the businesses he could delegate to others.

"Sit down." Amid the shouting, Thomas pointed to the chair next to him.

The moment I took seat, another person appeared in the Meeting Room. He was a young man and as he approached the table, he patted Gina on the shoulder.

"Here comes the President," Thomas snapped.

"Since we couldn't start the meeting without you, I decided to go out for some fresh air," said who I assumed was Michael. "Now, can we get started?" Michael moved to the other headboard. "I see new faces here," he added, referring to me.

"Olivia Westerling," I introduced myself after a couple of seconds in which I waited, like an idiot, for Thomas or Ada to save me from having to talk. Apparently they were both too jaded from this reunion to do so. "I'm Mr. Shelby's secretary".

"Nice to meet you, Olivia." Michael pretended to be kind, though I could tell that he didn't like my presence there. "I am Michael Gray, President of this company and please do not be offended, but I do not understand why a secretary is sitting at the board table instead of serving tea and biscuits".

The attack did not surprise or offend me because, beyond his rudeness, Michael was right. My presence in that meeting was misplaced. The reason I had attended and sat down was because Thomas had demanded it of me and, as I said above, he is my boss.

And as boss, he answered for me.

"Olivia is sitting at this table for the same reason your wife is, Michael," Thomas attacked with his cigarette in his mouth, "and she is not serving tea and biscuits for the same reason that your wife is not at home taking care of her son".

"Good news, Tom," Gina said suddenly. There was a mocking smile on her face and, almost gracefully, she tossed a folder that slid down the length of the table to Thomas. "Finally, Polly has given me her share. I am the new member of the board of directors".

"How the hell did she convince her?" Thomas asked Ada, who was close to him and didn't bother to hide the volume of his voice. He wanted to be heard.

I saw Ada shake her head, hinting at her ignorance.

"Even if you don't like me, I'm part of this family" Gina wasn't affected by the rejection she generated from her relatives. "And as of today, my vote in this directory is worth the same as yours".

Thomas took a long drag on his cigarette and fixed his eyes on the folder Gina had gave him. At no time did he make the move to open it but I saw him close his eyes for a second, as if inside him he was praying for an immense dose of patience. I shifted uncomfortably in the chair and Ada, with her eyes, told me to get ready.

"Michael, I thought that by giving you the Presidency I was going to avoid all of this" Thomas pointed to the attendees with repudiation "That I would be able to dedicate myself to my horses, to my things, to my son's violin classes but… nevertheless..." he sighed, "I DON'T HAVE A FUCKING MOMENT OF PEACE!"

No one at that table moved one iota but I, however, couldn't help but wince. It was the first time I had seen him so upset, so angry. The arteries in his jugular bulged beneath the skin and his eyes were bloodshot. Apparently, this was a rather ordinary situation in the meetings of the board of directors of the Shelby Company Limited as, looking around me, disoriented by the reaction of those present, I found the indifference reflected on all their faces. Ada was the only one with a different expression: she was ashamed, surely because I was witnessing all that.

"I'm sorry to tell you that you're going to have to continue attending board meetings until our business with the Chinese is finalized," Michael said, unperturbed.

"The opium shipment landed in America quite some time ago," Thomas said, and I repeated in my head what I had heard.

Opium. That was the issue that kept linking Thomas to the Company. I am not going to pretend astonishment and pretend that I did not suspect that that company was dealing with illegal business because, since I became a little involved with that family, I knew that such a thing was feasible. What worries me is the connection with the mafias. If the Shelbys are involved in drug trafficking, it is obvious that they maintain contact with mafia organizations, in this case, the Chinese mafia.

"Olivia, you'd better go," Ada finally spoke, presumably pressed by the shame that caused her that I was a connoisseur of the secrets that she had tried for so long to keep from me.

I really felt sorry for my friend. She was not at all proud that such things were the true source of the Shelby's fortune and that she had somehow agreed to live on it.

"I'm going with you," Thomas said to me when he saw me stand up. "I have nothing more to contribute to this meeting".

"We are millionaires, Tom," Michael spoke quickly. "Since opium reached American soil, we have enough money to live without working and surrounded by luxury for five lives. And all this in the middle of an economic depression; Half the world is starving,” he exclaimed, spreading his arms. "The Chinese want to continue working with us".

"Tell them the business is finished" Thomas bit his cigarette.

"Oh, I can't do that," Michael said and I saw Gina take his hand. "What kind of company throws a thriving business away?"

"A company that wants to return to legality." Thomas was starting to get furious once more and I wanted to get out of there.

"The Shelby Company Limited can't be legal." Michael smiled in a way that to my eyes was almost Machiavellian. "It will never be legal as long as Thomas Shelby lives".

To my surprise, Thomas did not respond, but turned his back on the directory and headed for the door. I followed him as best I could, even though he was striding and my heels didn't allow me to match him in speed.

Thomas entered his office and when he turned around to close the door, he noticed my presence behind him.

"I want to be alone," he demanded. He did not show his anger but the brightness in his eyes was able to reveal the fury he felt inside him.

"I'll make you some tea, Mr. Shelby." I tried not to sound intrusive, but I had a great need to make him feel better.

"Tea and biscuits." Thomas remembered his cousin's words and I saw him shake his head angrily. “What a jerk ”, he said, referring to Michael.

"I was not offended by Mr. Gray's words." I tried to free him from that burden. “After all, that's what we secretaries do: tea and biscuits ”. I smiled.

"You do more than that," he countered. "You also write poems". There was a pause. "Do you have a poem that you can read to me?" he asked.

I was hesitant for a couple of seconds remembering what had happened the last time I read a poem to that man. The wound that Thomas had caused still burned inside me even though everything seemed to have been resolved when he kissed me.

I looked over my shoulders at my empty desk and visualized the purse in which I brought my little notebook of poems with me just in case some event on the street inspired me to write.

"I can recite one I'm writing" I said doubtfully, "but it's not finished yet."

It was the poem I'd been struggling with the day Thomas Shelby showed up in my room. After he left and could not terminate the entry in this diary, I finally managed to give continuity to the poem, although not finish it. My experience had disturbed my mind and although I had tried so that my pen did not recount what I had lived, all my attempts were in vain.

"Sounds good to me." Thomas looked satisfied. "I'll accept the tea and the poem," he added, with a much calmer tone of voice.

I made the tea with such dedication and nervousness that if someone had seen me at the time, they would have believed that the person who was going to drink it was someone from royalty. I tried to prolong that ritual as long as I could, avoiding being, once again, the object of criticism. Yes, I knew Thomas would never laugh at my poetry the way Lord Pennington had, but even so, I didn't like having to face his review even if it was all flattery. I still wasn't used to exposing my work to anyone other than Ada or myself.

I entered the office carrying the tray. Thomas was at his desk with his glasses on, perusing a couple of papers. When he saw me, he put the papers aside, and I walked over to lay the tray on the polished wood of the desk. I took a seat in the same place as always.

I poured the tea and he watched my every move in silence. His gaze on me caused mixed feelings: on the one hand, it did not stop intimidating me but, on the other, I loved it.

"There's no biscuits, Mr. Shelby," I reported once I handed him his cup.

He was amused by that.

"Well, it will be tea without biscuits," he said. "What poem are you going to read to me?" He wanted to know.

I took my notebook which I had brought with me quite concealed, praying that he had forgotten to ask me to recite one of my poems.

"It doesn't have a title yet and like I told you, it's not finished," I reminded him, trying to discourage him.

"It doesn't matter," he shrugged and I cursed inside myself. He took a cigarette.

_Through those eyes,  
I perceive the poison,  
so pure and immaculate  
that drinking from them would be  
an irremediable debauchery,_

_Through those eyes,  
I recognize pain,  
grief cradles me,  
misfortune distresses me,  
anxiety cramps me._

_Through those eyes,  
I identify the need for a kiss,  
a kind word,  
a tender caress._

_Through those eyes,  
I give in,  
I don't fight,  
I surrender._

When I finished, I took my eyes off the paper and fixed them on his, wanting to discover his reaction. Thomas was absorbed with his gaze on me and behind his glasses, I saw him analyze me.

"Who did you write that poem for?" He asked bluntly. I am risking saying that at that moment I perceived him jealous, but that was the feeling that he transmitted to me.

"For no one in particular," I said, taking refuge in the lie. "Most of my poems don't have an addressee, ”I added.

" 'Most' ", Thomas repeated. "That means that some do. Tell me, what is it that leads you to write if what you write is not addressed at someone?" He wasn't questioning me, but rather, he was curious.

"What drives me to write is my passion for writing, Mr. Shelby, nothing more. Are you not passionate about any activity?"

"I love horses and everything related to them," Thomas confessed, sipping his tea. "Do you like horses, Olivia?"

I must admit that since I saw that huge painting in his dining room and began to know the places he inhabited, among which his office stood out, I knew that Thomas Shelby loved horses. Every site related to him had some equestrian figure or image, without exception, and as I once wrote in this same notebook, I knew that the Shelby business had grown out of equine racing.

"I like them. I had the pleasure of seeing them up close,” I said and witnessed my response throw him off balance. "They're precious animals"

"Just see them?" He asked and narrowed his eyes.

"Yes"

"You never rode a horse?" He looked at me as if he had a being from another planet in front of him. The possibility that someone had never ridden a horse did not enter his mind.

"No" I confessed somewhat embarrassed.

Thomas opened his desk drawer and took out what appeared to be an agenda.

"I have an acquaintance who trains horses," he informed me, searching through the sheets. "I'll buy a horse for you" he blurted out suddenly "What would you like? A mare?"

The effervescence with which he addressed me caught my attention and the fact that he was giving me a horse alarmed me.

"Mr. Shelby, you don't have to ..."

"Of course I have to" he interrupted, almost annoyed. "No one who has never ridden a horse can work for me". I didn't know if he was serious or not. "Now tell me, do you want a stallion or a mare?"

"Whatever you think is best," I said quietly. His attitude was a bit intrusive to me.

"A mare, then." He took a drag on his cigarette. "I'll get in touch with my acquaintance right now and maybe, in a couple of weeks, we can go to her estate” Suddenly, I saw him smile. His attitude was too much of a contrast to what he had shown earlier in the Meeting Room. "I'll teach you to ride a horse, Olivia".

I nodded and smiled back. I accepted the fact that I was excited to receive any gift from him, whatever it was, and seeing him enthusiastic made me happy.


	10. Olivia's memories

Tommy closed the notebook sadly and stopped leaning against the wall. He had been on that cold Whitechapel sidewalk for quite some time, standing in front of a hat shop, and across the street was the Westerling family home.

He couldn't say for sure if he was gathering courage or was afraid to discover a truth that he wouldn't be able to bear. In the latter case, what would that truth have been? That Olivia was, indeed, dead? Or that she was alive in some corner of the world, hidden with the help of Ada and Polly? Tommy could not establish what caused him the most fear because the result in both scenarios would be the same: uncontrollable rage.

He crossed the street with determination and a car almost ran over him. He was distracted and his heart asked for the tranquility that only laudanum gave him. But he needed to be sober, at least as long as he was in the Westerling's house, since he didn't want to miss any detail, no matter how small it could be.

He knocked on the door and was answered by silence. On the other side of the old wooden door, absolutely nothing was heard. Tommy waited a couple of seconds and just as he was about to knock one more time, he heard slow footsteps crawl across the parquet floor inside. Before he could assume someone was going to greet him, the door opened.

The first sign was bad: the woman in front of him, short with a thick build, wore mourning clothes. She had purplish circles under her eyes that framed her dark eyes, similar to Olivia's but opaque, and her wrinkled face revealed the nights of endless crying.

"Yes?" The woman looked intimidated by Tommy's presence at her door. It was remarkable to see a man so well dressed in this area of the East End.

"Good afternoon," Tommy said, trying, that way, to reassure the woman. "My name is Thomas Shelby, OBE. I'm a Member of Parliament for South Birmingham”. It took him a while to realize that most of what he had said had been unnecessary. His name would have been enough, since his rank and his position in Parliament made the woman hide a little behind the half-open door.

"Do you need something?"

"I'm Ada Thorne's brother,"

"Oh," he witnessed how the woman raised her eyebrows. "Is Ada with you?" She asked and began to look for his sister.

"No." Once again, Tommy was cursing Ada inwardly. Things would have been easier with her there. "She couldn't come, but she sent me instead,” Tommy lied.

"And what does Ada need?" The woman had been less sullen since he had communicated his consanguinity with Ada.

"Some things she loaned her daughter when they both lived here in London and Olivia never took back to Birmingham."

The mere mention of Olivia caused the woman's gaze to darken again, and Tommy took the reaction as the second bad sign. Olivia's mother stood aside and with a slight wave of her hand, allowed Tommy into the house.

The Westerling's home was a small old building, and it smelled musty. The low ceiling reminded him of his old home on Small Heath and the wide, masonry-covered fireplace made him long for the simple life he'd had. His mansion was too large for the ornate stoves to evenly distribute the heat in the huge rooms. He sighed as he remembered the times he had told Olivia that he would leave his entire fortune behind and that he would go live with her in the humble brick house where, shortly after, she was found dead.

"I told Olivia it was a bad idea to go to Birmingham." Mrs. Westerling's bleak tone of voice forced him back to reality. "She told me it would be temporary until she could make a living from her poems. She was always too fanciful.” Tommy watched her jaw clench.

"I'm sure she would have made a living from her poetry if…" Tommy stopped, realizing what he was about to say. He couldn't ignore the fact that he was talking to a mother whose children were all dead.

"What does Ada need, specifically?" Mrs. Westerling deflected the conversation and crossed her arms, as if trying to contain her anguish. Beyond grief, she seemed to be a strong-willed woman, and then Tommy remembered that she was a teacher.

"Some notebooks and photos. Ada told me that Olivia kept them in her room."

"Mr. Shelby, Olivia has dozens of notebooks in her room," Mrs. Westerling said. "Since she learned to write, she never stopped writing and wrote all the time. If you don't tell me a characteristic of the notebooks that belong to your sister, I won't be able to ..."

"Would you allow me to rummage through her things?" Tommy snapped. He had to take a chance and ask the question since he had discovered that he was no good at lying to broken mothers.

Mrs. Westerling seemed unconvinced at first and pondered what she had said for a couple of seconds. It was obvious that she was not amused about a stranger touching her late daughter's belongings. Tommy saw her open and close her mouth a couple of times, as if when she came up with the answer, she changed her mind, and she did so until, at last, she was able to express what was thinking.

"Okay," she agreed, "but I'll go up with you. You need to know that I allow you this because, since Olivia's death, I have not been able to touch anything that belonged to her and I plan to continue like this. When alive, she never liked me snooping through her things, ”the woman confessed with disgust.

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Westerling."

"My name is Jane. Ada didn't tell you?"

"Yes," Tommy lied and swallowed, "but it seemed overconfident to call you by your name," he said. "Thank you, Jane".

As they climbed the steep, narrow stairs, Tommy imagined how angry Ada would be if she found out that he was there at the Westerling family home, using her name to rummage through Olivia's belongings. Then he realized that bringing Ada with him would have been of no use to him, because she would have refused to act in the same way as him and she would have let Jane know his true intentions.

Olivia's old room was at the end of the dark hallway. Jane Westerling opened the door warily and allowed Tommy to be the first to step into what had been her daughter's world for so many years. The poor woman did not want to be there, and as she followed Tommy's footsteps, the latter noticed that she was doing it with something close to fear. He couldn't blame her: Jane feared her emotions the same way he did, and the memory of Olivia in each of the objects threatened to overwhelm their hearts.

The place was small and packed with things. The bed was made and on it rested a significant number of stuffed animals and porcelain dolls with cracked faces. There were shelves everywhere and they were overflowing with dusty, messy books stacked on top of each other.

Tommy noted that although Olivia had left the place in early 1931, it still smelled of her. He could imagine her sitting in front of the small green table writing her poems, taking a place between her makeup and accessories. He could almost see her lying on the soft bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals, with the bookshelf above her head, threatening to throw a book at her while she slept. He imagined her searching for some garment in the old closet, the door of which was broken and bent.

_< < Hello again, Ollie. I missed you >>_, he greeted her in his thoughts when he realized that, if she was dead, her spirit had chosen to live there.

He had a hard time choosing a place to start looking. Under Jane's watchful eye, Tommy chose the wardrobe, and as he opened it, the only hinge holding the door broke and he had to use his reflexes to keep it from falling to the floor. Looking up, he noticed that the closet was full of clothes and that caught his attention: Olivia had gone to live in Birmingham without really knowing when she would return home. Why had she left so many clothes behind? Or perhaps, were those the clothes she was wearing at the time?

"Olivia had more clothes than I thought," Tommy observed shrewdly.

"She was always natty," Jane said, with a sad smile. "As much as she denied it and hated corsets, she liked to dress well and whenever she could she bought a dress” she recounted nostalgically. "Her boyfriend also gave her several dresses. Those are the ones she left here.” As Jane said that last thing, Tommy noticed her tone of voice change to a more somber one.

"I gifted her a pearl Chanel dress and some patent leather shoes," Tommy confessed, unaware of what he was hinting at. His irrational masculine pride had pushed him to say something, whatever it was, that would put him above that Fairfax bastard.

"Did you get along with my daughter, Mr. Shelby?" That Jane would ask that question was to be expected.

Tommy witnessed the woman's gaze scrutinizing him and, intoxicated by Olivia's presence, he told himself that he couldn't continue to lie. He had loved her, loved her still, and would love her until his lungs released their last breath. Why hide from Olivia's mother how much he had loved her daughter?

"I wanted to marry her," he snapped, and Jane Westerling's eyes widened.

"What?" The woman was dumbfounded.

"Olivia and I loved each other," he explained with a twinge in his chest, a product of anguish. "I don't know if she ever told you about me but ..."

"Oh yes, I remember." Jane didn't let him finish speaking and put her hand to her lips, stifling surprise. "Ollie called me every week and a month after arriving in Birmingham, she told me that she had met a man". Tommy saw her shake her head, visibly shaken. "She mentioned it to me almost with fear, because she knew how much it had affected me to see her suffer for that idiot Andrew. I told her to be careful, to make sure that she was falling in love with a good man, and I asked her to please not to tell me anything else to save me trouble". Jane had started to cry. "I was selfish. I must have allowed her to tell me all about her new love."

"We were all selfish in one way or another." Thomas tried to comfort Jane by using words. With his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, he stroked the wedding ring.

"It's reassuring to know that before she left," Jane stifled a sob, "my Ollie met a man who truly loved her. If you are like Ada, Mr. Shelby, I have no doubt that you are a wonderful person".

Tommy felt a lump in his throat, and for a moment his heart seemed to stop beating. At what Jane had said, he refrained from nodding his head. He was not a wonderful person. The man who could have been a wonderful person had died the day he had set foot on French soil, with a shovel in one hand and rifle in the other. The mud and the blood had washed away any trace of humanity and the demons of the war had taken both Grace and Olivia. He couldn't imagine what Jane Westerling would say if she learned of his involvement in her daughter death.

_< < I'm not a wonderful person. Last week I killed an innocent man and yesterday I threatened another >>._

He watched as the woman braced herself and reached down to find something under Olivia's bed. To Tommy's surprise, she pulled out a box much like the one Ada had brought him to his study, and placed it on the bed. A cloud of dust blew off the bedspread as the weight of the box sank into the mattress.

"This box contains some of Olivia's diaries," Jane said. "I don't know if it is what you are looking for, but as far as I know, here she kept the diaries she wrote from the time she met Ada to before leaving for Birmingham. Your sister's notebooks may be here."

"Thank you." For a second, Tommy was about to confess what he was really looking for but he managed to stop in time.

"I'll leave you alone," the woman resolved suddenly. "I won't be able to bear the memories of my daughter, and besides, I think you deserve a moment of solitude".

When Jane left, Tommy opened the box almost desperately and the first thing he saw was a photograph. It didn't take long for him to recognize the couple in it: they were Olivia and Andrew Fairfax, by London Bridge. The photograph was dated 1925 and she recognized an engagement ring on Olivia's hand. She looked immensely happy and beautiful, as always, and Fairfax, who looked much more unkempt than the man who had met him the previous evening at the bar, looked listless.

Tommy put the photo aside and picked up a notebook at random. Opening it, he noted that it covered the months of May and June 1929. He repeated in his mind what Fairfax had related to him; how his relationship with Olivia had ended in the middle of that year and how he left the communist militancy when the fascist ranks began to acquire a worrying number of followers.

Tommy searched through the pages for an entry whose handwriting betrayed a broken heart, and found it.

* * *

*******

* * *

_June 3, 1929._

He did it. Andrew broke up with me one more time. He invited me to his house, we had dinner together, we had sex and he broke up with me. He acted the same way as four years ago and I was such an idiot that I didn't see it coming.

My heart hurts and I don't mean it figuratively. My chest really hurts, something twists inside me behind my ribs. It must be the controlled crying, the silence that I impose on myself so that my parents don't hear me cry. If Dad finds out that Andrew broke up with me again, he'll kill him.

Yes, I want Andrew dead, but I don't want my father to be the one to get his hands dirty and I think that no one on this planet deserves to lose freedom for such an jerk. Not even I, who have every right to take his life after he promised to take me to the altar twice, and twice he left me.

He was so cowardly, so miserable, that first he dragged me to his bed and then he told me that he intended to leave me. He says that he has met the daughter of a Lord, that he slept with her a couple of months ago without pretense of any kind and that he fell in love.

We reengaged in March and the wedding would be in July. My wedding dress is half finished and I am extremely embarrassed to tell the dressmaker that I don't need her to finish it. For a matter of pride -if I still have such a thing- I will pretend that nothing has happened and days before the date I will go to look for my dress, with the smile that I promised myself I would have when the happiest day of my life approached.

What made me believe that he would be able to change? Internally, I knew that such a thing was not possible. I forgave him the first time because the possibility of living a disappointment of that nature did not fit in my mind; It could not be happening to me. It was simple denial, a willful blindness, a lie that I told myself. And now I pay the price.

I wish I still had those damn papers with me that he once handed me and that compromised him in front of his comrades. They would have served at least to avenge me and frustrate his political desires, but I was so obedient and worried about him so much that I threw them into the fireplace.

I wonder what his comrades would say if they found out that Andrew Fairfax was selling information from the Communist Party to the fascists.

Andrew, for his part, was not an idiot. He knew that if he began to associate with fascism his political career would be cut short, so he enlisted in the Labour Party to climb faster. It is impressive that nobody within that party has done an investigation into the man that is Fairfax, but what were they going to find? If I, a thousand times stupid, burned any evidence capable of incriminating him.

* * *

*******

* * *

Tommy couldn't continue reading. Suddenly, all the pieces began to fit together.

The previous evening, at the bar, Fairfax had pretended to be a foreign man to Oswald Mosley. He had toyed with the possibility that Olivia had been so foolish as to never put the truth he wanted to hide in writing, and if she had, what value were the words of a jilted woman? He had surely thought that Tommy, reading something that compromised him, would never believe Olivia, but God only knows how wrong he was.

It was to be expected that a piece of shit capable of taking advantage of such a noble girl and selling his own comrades would never think that on that Earth there could be someone who believed Olivia's words; that there was a person capable of loving her so much as not to question what she wrote.

Fairfax had underestimated him and Olivia. Tommy had an immense desire to shoot that bastard in the head but his mind made him remember what she had written in her diary: "no one on this planet deserves to lose freedom for such a jerk".

He found the small bottle of laudanum in the inside pocket of his jacket and took a long sip of the only elixir capable of quelling the impetuous need to kill Fairfax.

He had to get back to Birmingham before he did something crazy. He didn't know if Fairfax had laughed at him, raising the possibility that Olivia was alive, or remorse had driven him to be honest for the first time, but Tommy had already made that theory his own and wouldn't stop until he found enough evidence to lead him to Olivia, dead or alive.

If there was something true, it was that there were many details that did not make sense and of which he could not understand.

"Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Shelby?" Jane's voice surprised him. Such was his rage that he had practically forgotten that he was still in the Westerling house. "My husband will be home from work in a few minutes and I have made tea. Would you like a cup?"

"You're very kind, Jane," said Tommy, his tongue numb. The opioid was starting to do its thing, "but it's about time I leave. I haven't been able to find my sister's notebooks. Would it be too much to ask if you would allow me to bring the box to Birmingham for Ada?"

He saw Jane frown upon hearing him. "I will return the box to you next week, when I have to go back to Parliament, and I will have tea with you and your husband."

"Only if you promise that Ada will come with you next week." Jane smiled a little. "I miss that little crazy one a lot. The last time I saw her was… ” she stopped abruptly.

"At Olivia's funeral, a month and a half ago?" Tommy finished the sentence for her. He wondered if the strange reaction of the woman in front of him was a laudanum hallucination.

"Yes, exactly. At my daughter's funeral, ”she nodded, folding her arms.

Tommy decided that he would pass up the opportunity to investigate because he was in no condition to bear any kind of revelation and the lack of mental clarity did not assure him that his brain was not exaggerating everything.

Tommy took the box and Jane walked him to the door. He said goodbye to the woman with all the kindness that he could pretend and while he was trying to remember where he had parked his car, he agreed with Arthur in his mind: he should read the last diary, perhaps there he would find the answer he was looking for . As soon as he set foot in Birmingham, that would be what he would do. Tommy would try not to involve Ada and Polly because if they were lying to him as he believed they were, they would go out of their way to perpetuate the lie by blocking his way back into the arms of his Olivia.


	11. The bloody box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Tommy being a jerk with Lizzie.
> 
> IMPORTANT: Thomas Shelby is a dark character, with more shadows than lights, and in my story I do not pretend to make him a good guy. As we saw in season 5, Tommy is completely broken, out of his mind, drifting into madness. He has attitudes that for me are reprehensible and unjustifiable.
> 
> As a fan of the series, and as contradictory as it sounds, what I like the most about Tommy is precisely that: his anti-hero quality, so I will not get rid of him in my story, but I will use him to my advantage to perfect his relationship with the protagonist, which and as you will see, is far from being a perfect woman.
> 
> We all have our dark side and I find it extremely dehumanizing to deprive the characters of it (plus I consider it a lack of respect for the original writer). I will do my best to make a Tommy as faithful as possible to the Tommy we meet on the show.

Tommy arrived in Birmingham the next day, as the sun was beginning to set behind the grove of trees that marked his lands. He parked the car in front of the wide entrance to the mansion and Cyril came out to meet him, wagging his tail with joy.

"Hello, boy," he greeted the dog with the words since he couldn't pet it. He was carrying the box he had brought from London and it was heavy.

Frances, the housekeeper, appeared in the doorway, somewhat unsettled by what he was carrying, and offered to take the box as soon as Tommy entered the house.

"No, Frances," Tommy refused. "It's too heavy for you".

"We weren't expecting you so soon, Mr. Shelby", the housekeeper commented, following in his footsteps.  
"Good way of telling me I'm not welcome in my fucking house," Tommy snapped as he hurried toward his study. Carrying that weight, he cursed how unnecessarily large the mansion was.

Behind him, he heard the housekeeper try to justify herself but couldn't come up with a sentence that sounded convincing enough. Tommy didn't care; he was aware that, in recent times, even the service felt a certain animosity towards him and, being honest with himself, he couldn't care less. He was paying them their wages to do the work they had to do, not to be his friends. Besides, Tommy had bigger issues on his mind at the time.

He arrived at the door of his study and noticed that it was closed, which caught his attention, since when he went out, he always left it open. It was a tactic that he had learned to implement to know when a person entered his study, since if someone did, it was to be expected that they would close the door when leaving.

Tommy looked at Frances and nodded for her to open the door for him. It was then he noticed that the woman was more nervous than she should be.

Striving to ignore the number of suspicious clues, Tommy stepped into his study. The first thing he did was look at his desk, which was spotless. He placed the box he brought on the couch as he felt his blood begin to boil.

"Where is the box?" He asked bluntly.

"Which box, Mr. Shelby?"

"The box on top of my desk, the one Ada brought in a couple of weeks ago."

Tommy witnessed how Frances was unable to meet his gaze and was breathing heavily. The housekeeper was holding back from speaking and he knew he couldn't pressure a poor woman who was only following orders.

"It's okay, Frances. Don't worry. I know who it was”, he snapped and freed himself from his coat and cap, throwing them angrily on the desk.

He left the study and walked to the room where he knew he would find her. Lizzie was in the living room as always. 

Tommy opened the door and Lizzie, who was sitting on the couch reading a magazine, jumped. The expression of terror she put on when she saw him made her know that fury was manifesting on her face in a disturbing way.

"Where is it?" Tommy asked "What did you do with it?"

"What are you talking about?" Lizzie leaned back in her seat and Tommy gritted his teeth at the realization that she was making fun of him. He took her by the shoulders tightly and forced her to her feet. Lizzie shook herself and tried to free herself from his grip. 

"What the fuck are you doing ?! Let me go!"

"Tell me what you did with the box," Tommy demanded, his jaw clenched and his fingers buried in Lizzie's bare arms. "Tell me where the box is!"

"I don't know what box you're talking about!" His wife pushed him hard and managed to get him to free her but when she did, she was left sitting on the couch.

Tommy was furious. He clenched his fists and began pacing the room, concentrating simply on inhaling and exhaling. Lizzie watched him in terror from her seat.

"I'll repeat it just one more time," Tommy rubbed his face, "tell me what you did with the fucking box or..."  
"Or what?" Lizzie stood up and approached angrily. "Or what ?! Are you going to hit me in front of your own daughter?" She pointed to a corner of the room that until then he had overlooked.

It was then that Tommy knew they weren't alone in that room. Looking where Lizzie was pointing, he met Ruby's eyes, flooding with tears and fear. The little girl had backed up until she was against the wall and there she had remained, still, staring in amazement at the monster she had for a father.

If Tommy had a piece of his heart left, he was sure it had been broken in that instant. He gulped and flopped onto the couch, stiff. His body lost all traces of strength and vehemence as he was aware of what he had caused.

"Ruby," he spoke to the girl. She was still motionless and then Tommy stood up and walked over to her, "I'm sorry." As he tried to hug her, he noticed Ruby flinch. She was afraid of him.

"Leave her alone". Lizzie scooped Ruby up and pulled her away from him. "I don't want you to go near my daughter again, Thomas Shelby. I don't want you to talk to me again. I'm leaving. We're leaving, ” Lizzie muttered. "It was your sister who took the bloody box, if that's what you want to know. She came yesterday morning, with your aunt, they went into your study and took that box." 

Lizzie took off the wedding band and threw it in his face. "I should have done this a long time ago".

Lizzie took Ruby with her and Tommy did nothing to stop her. He deserved that. He deserved to live and die just like the piece of shit he was. Now, he only had Charles and not because the boy wanted to stay by his side. 

Tommy drank all the laudanum that was left in the bottle that he always carried with him and left the mansion under the inquisitive gaze of all the service personnel, who had already learned of the scandal. He got in the car and drove at the speed limit into Birmingham.

Night had already fallen when he reached Ada's home and the immense disgust he had for himself along with laudanum, prevented anger from taking over his body once more. Tommy rang the bell, although he could have opened the door with his copy of the keys.

"Tom?" Ada approached the hall to see who was the person Karl had just let in.

"Where is it?" Tommy asked again. Ever since he had arrived from London, the words he spoke seemed to always be the same.

"Where is what?" Her sister looked confused. "Are you feeling okay?"

Tommy leaned his weight against the wall. He felt like he was going to fade away and he witnessed how Karl looked at his mother with concern.

"The box," he came to say, "Where's the box, Ada?"

Ada looked away and bit her lower lip. She was immensely uncomfortable, and on her face Tommy couldn't tell worry from fear.

"It was a mistake to give you that box, Thomas." Polly appeared coming down the stairs. She was carrying Beth in her arms. "Ada should never have given it to you".

He was about to insult his aunt but his throat tightened. The moisture that appeared on his cheeks led him to know that he was crying.

"Give me..." he said and his legs gave out, causing him to fall to the ground.

"Tom!" Ada leaned closer, alarmed.

"… my Olivia back".

Her sister, in dismay, turned her face to Polly but the latter remained unfazed. Tommy tried to get up but couldn't, and, as his eyes blurred with tears, he glimpsed Olivia's figure at the end of the stairs. She watched him and noticed how sorry she was for him.

He wanted her to hug him and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

"Ollie," he called her. Ada turned her eyes to where he had them. "Please, Ollie, convince them".

"We should call a doctor," Karl suggested palely.

"No". Polly walked over to Karl and handed him Beth, who had begun to sob. The girl was also upset by all this fuss. "He's hallucinating, ”she explained, turning to Ada. "Help me get him to his feet. We will lay him on the couch".

At first Tommy resisted, but he was so weak it didn't take long for the women to carry him into the living room. They put him on the couch and Ada took off his shoes while Polly looked for a cold-water washcloth to put on his head. The only thing Tommy aspired to at that moment was to claim what he believed was his rightful, which was something as simple as the truth, but his languid body and troubled mind made it so impossible that he had to give in to the will of his sister and aunt.

Before he lost consciousness, he learned that he had spoken Olivia's name a few more times, and when things turned dark he heard Ada and Polly comment on his deplorable condition. He couldn't tell how long he was in the limbo between conciousness and dreaming, but when he opened his eyes, the light emanating from the Tiffany lamp led him to groan.

Ada and Polly were still there. Ada was sitting on the one-body couch and Polly stood with a cigarette on her lips and a glass of gin in her right hand.

"You see?" Polly spoke to Ada. "I told you he was still alive. A man capable of withstanding multiple bullets and a concussion doesn't die from a little opium".

"The box…" Tommy wouldn't give up so easily.

"God." His aunt let all the cigarette smoke out of her lungs. "We won't give you that box, Tom. You see what has happened. These are the consequences of your sister's impulses".

"I did it because I thought he deserved to know what the diaries were saying," Ada defended herself. Her nerves were frayed.

"Well no, he doesn't deserve it," Polly snapped. "If reading a couple of entries he killed a man and faced another, what do you think he would be able to do if he was knowledgeable about everything else?"

"Why the fuck…" Tommy sat up on the couch. He had a headache so bad that he felt nauseous "...did you take the box from me?"

"Do you insist?" Polly walked over and crouched beside him. She fixed her dagger-like black eyes on him. "When you left here the other day, your sister called me in anguish and told me that you were heading to London to meet Olivia's ex-boyfriend, that you said a bunch of nonsense. I asked her how the hell you got to that state and she confessed that she gave you the box with the diaries". Polly took him by the face and pressed his cheeks, as she used to do when he was a disobedient child. "You have no idea what you're doing, Thomas. If by behaving like this you only exterminated yourself, it wouldn't be so bad, but you expose us all. Wasn't it enough to expose Olivia?"

"Olivia is alive." Tommy took Polly's wrist and forced her to release him. "I know she is".

"What the fuck are you saying?"

"She's alive, somewhere, and you're hiding her from me," he spat out those words with anger, "and you took her diaries to alter them, so I wouldn't discover the truth."

Ada and Polly exchanged glances. The rational side of Tommy told him that they did it because their attitude worried them, but the madness that increasingly took over his mind, whispered that such behavior denoted that he had hit the nail on the head.

"You're wrong, Tommy." Polly shook her head.

"Polly, I think we should ..."

"No" her aunt interrupted Ada and moved with her to a corner of the room. Tommy heard them whisper and strained to listen. His head was spinning. "Tom," Polly was turning to him now, "we've decided something. We will give you some diaries to read but we will choose them ourselves".

"I want them all," Tommy demanded furiously. "Ada, I want them all" he turned to his sister since apparently she agreed with him more than she liked to admit.

Ada snorted and closed her eyes, as if she was suddenly between a rock and a hard place. Tommy and Polly were waiting impatiently for her answer, both with very different expectations.

"Okay…"

"Ada!" Polly didn't agree that her niece had relented.

"Pol, we can't deny Tommy access to the truth. You know that no matter how hard we try to keep him away from this one, he'll find it anyway,” Ada explained.

"You are aware of the consequences that all this can have, right?" Polly questioned, setting the glass of gin on the coffee table. She was upset.

"Yes, I am," her sister admitted, "and that's why, Tom, I'm going to ask you one favor only: you must keep reading them in order. Only then will you be able to understand".

Tommy, dismayed, looked at both women with confusion. Ada sat back on her couch and Polly took a drag on her cigarette. The stillness of those two lit all his alarms and beyond the lethargy caused by the laudanum, he felt the anger building inside him.

"What truth are you talking about?" Tommy asked.

"Don't make me regret this, Tom," Ada said, then glanced at her aunt for a slight nod. Polly reluctantly left the room and Tommy heard her going up the stairs. "You're hurt and I want you to know that I'm able to empathize with your pain. I loved Olivia too and that's why I'm giving you this opportunity. Don't spoil it."

"Ada," he called to her sister as he felt his heart clench with grief, "is she alive?"

He caught a glimpse of how his sister's eyes, which were always wet and bright, darkened, and the yellowish glow of the lamp betrayed the subtle change of expression on her face. Tommy couldn't tell if that was a positive answer, but it was an answer, after all. Ada couldn't keep her eyes on him and looked down at her hands as if searching for the words she needed.

"Whatever I tell you, you won't believe me," she whispered. "You have to read the diaries. Let Olivia give you the answer".

Polly came back to the living room carrying the bloody box. She placed it almost with anger on the coffee table in front of him and, taking the glass of gin again, left the room once more, but not before throwing a questioning glance at her niece. Tommy pretended to stand up and take the box but Ada stopped him.

"Don't even think about leaving this house."

"What?"

“Do you really think you can drive like this?" Ada got to her feet, very upset. "Let me tell you, you won't be able to read those diaries if you die in a car crash".

Tommy flopped down on the couch.

"I'll start reading here, then."

"Do whatever you want." He saw his sister swallow hard. "What did Fairfax tell you?"

"Bullshit"

"Well, it must have been pretty convincing bullshit to get you that way," Ada snapped.

Tommy leaned back and gave a weary sigh. He was still dizzy and confused, but even so, the memory of Andrew Fairfax disgusted him. He had a pending chat with that scum, and while he was a long way from London now, Tommy would make sure to convey everything he had to say to him.

"You will be surprised to learn that we both agree on something," Tommy confessed and waited for his sister to ask him what he meant.

"Unbelievable". Ada was a smart woman and she avoided the need to ask any questions. She knew Tommy was referring to Olivia's fate. "Well, I'll go upstairs with Polly, let's see if I can make her understand. Don't even think about leaving here, at least not until you're sober, did you hear me?"

Tommy nodded and his sister left the living room, but not before closing the door. Immediately after she left, he opened the box and, straining his eyes, tried to identify the diary that chronologically followed the one he had read. It didn't take him long to find it, although its condition caught his attention: its sheets were sticky and dark, wrinkled as if they had been soaked with some kind of liquid. Bringing it to his nose, he recognized the aroma of the coffee, and upon checking the entries, he discovered that the calligraphy was intact, so the coffee must have spilled before Olivia wrote on it.

"What a mess," Olivia said across from him, sitting on the one-body couch. This time, she was wearing the blue dress from the gala dinner.

  
"Ollie…" he muttered in wonder. She was so beautiful.  
"It's difficult to write on dirty sheets."

"Why didn't you use another notebook?" He asked but she didn't seem to hear him.

"Do you remember the first time I served you coffee at the office, Tom?" She didn't let him answer as she kept talking. "It was that day… I… ” She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on the box full of diaries.

"Yes, I do" The memory came to Tommy and the burning of the bile burned his throat.

The date of that disastrous event coincided with the one he was about to start reading. Then he understood the reason for the spilled coffee and the erratic and nervous handwriting. Suddenly, the immense need to get rid of Oswald Mosley had brought down the laudanum lethargy like a wall made of paper. His hands began to tremble and his pulse raced.

"You shouldn't have left me alone with him," Olivia said.

"I'm sorry…"

In the blink of an eye, Olivia was no longer there, and Tommy, nervous and victim of an uncontrollable urge to murder, forced himself to read: Ada had told him to read the diaries in order because in them he would find the answer he was looking for. There would be no distractions and he would read everything his eyes allowed him until his Olivia, the real Olivia —not the hallucination— confessed her truth through words.


	12. A coffee to forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted you to know that now I'm also publishing this story on wattpad! I was already doing so with its original version in spanish, but now you can find it in english, too :)  
> It's funnier there. I can post gifs and songs, so if you want to read my story on wattpad you can find it with the same name "Born to Lose" (my username is the same as here, too).

_May 4, 1931_

Yesterday, I was writing in this same diary when, inadvertently, I hit the coffee cup and it spilled on the notebook. I had to tear out what I had written, since everything that I had documented up to that moment was diluted and disappeared, as if it had never existed.

I wish I could say the same about the situation that led me to write in such a pitiful state, unable to control the movements of my hand which caused the disaster.

The coffee was hot and I burned three fingers. When I ran to the bathroom to place the affected skin under the stream of cold water, I found Ada in the bathtub, who asked me what the hell had happened to me. I broke down in tears, in a cry so rough that it did not take long to turn into a nervous breakdown and my friend called a doctor.

They gave me a few drops of laudanum and lying on my bed, half asleep, I was able to relate what had happened.

Today, one day after such an event, I have decided that I will not get rid of this notebook even if its sheets are ruined. I have resolved to capture in them everything they are capable of until I can start another notebook, because I want them to be testimony to what happened.

It was raining heavily when I woke up yesterday morning. Knowing that the tram would drop me off a couple of blocks from the Shelby Company Limited offices, I dressed in clothes that I wouldn't mind ruining with mud and whose fabrics were thin enough to dry easily. I had the usual breakfast: a cup of sweet tea and toast with blueberry jam.

As I waited for my tea to be at a safe drinking temperature, Ada reminded me, just as she had done a couple of days earlier, that she had some business to take care of before going to work, so I would have to go to the Company on my own. I didn't mind: as I said above, I had already assimilated the fact of travelling by tram.

I waited at the stop longer than usual and there I knew the tram was running late. Under my umbrella, I felt icy water droplets wet my bare calves and the skirt of my dress. I knew I would be late and I became anxious.

When I saw the tram approaching, I noticed that it was full of people and I took a deep breath of air for courage. It was disgusting to travel in a crowded means of transport on a rainy day. I hadn't gotten on yet when I could smell the earthy scent of mud and the acrid stench of sweat.

Upon reaching my destination, I ran through the streets of Small Heath dodging puddles as my heels would allow and, when I arrived at the company, climbed the stairs without even stopping to take a breath. I finally glimpsed the closed double doors of Thomas's office and I opened them wide.

"Mr. Shelby, I'm very sorry I'm late ..."

I interrupted myself when I noticed that Thomas was not alone. At my boldness, the man who was sitting in front of the desk turned to look at me and did so, first with some indignation, then with a nasty smile. A neat mustache framed his upper lip.

Thomas, for his part, looked at me seriously. He had not been amused by my behavior.

"I'm sorry," I apologized as the sudden stutter allowed me and proceeded to withdraw.

"Oh wait," the man with the mustache stopped me in a soft voice and I, for some reason, I listened to him. "What's your name?"

I turned my eyes to Thomas once more and witnessed him look at this guy with an abhorrence that I am unable to describe. The other man, however, kept his back to him, waiting for my answer as if Thomas had ceased to exist.

"Olivia, sir," I introduced myself, completely seized with discomfort.

"What a lovely name!" He exclaimed, and for me it was quite an exaggeration. "What are you doing here, Olivia?" he asked with sincere curiosity.

"She's my secretary," Thomas answered for me. His tone of voice was much deeper than normal and denoted hatred. He rushed to speak before the other could say anything. "You can go, Olivia".

"Mr. Shelby, all of a sudden I feel like having some tea." Although Thomas had managed to stop that guy from talking to me again, he had used a rather clever, and rather daring, resource to create situations in which he could interact with me .

There was something about the man's manner that gave me a strange and alarming sense of dread. I suppose it is the instinct that all of us who belong to the animal kingdom possess and that scientists tend to link with survival. I sniffed the danger as soon as he laid eyes on me and his corners lifted at the mere glance of my figure.

The fact that Thomas was so defensive when he was usually always relaxed was also very striking to me. The unconscious gesture of almost pouncing over the desk when the man asked for tea, as if he were a lion defending his inviolable territory, made me realize that Thomas was trying to protect me from him.

The tension could be cut with a knife.

"Get Mr. Mosley some tea," Thomas ordered.

Mosley. When I heard his name I understood a million and a half things. Oswald Mosley: the quasi-mystical leader of fascists. I had never seen him but had heard of him. In London he was the figure who led a dangerous mass of hate-filled brains like puppets, and I assumed that in Birmingham, as in any other corner of the Kingdom, it would be the same. His popularity had skyrocketed since he was tried to be killed during a rally a couple of years ago.

"Do you want some tea too, Mr. Shelby?" I asked, before returning to the secretariat.

"Coffee for me," Thomas told me as he got hold of his cigarette case. "Strong".

As I turned around, I felt the gazes of both men on me. I couldn't tell for sure where Thomas' eyes were staring at, but as if I were suddenly a circus freak with one eye on the back of my neck, I knew Mosley was leering at my rear. I bristled, product of disgust, and when I closed the door that I should never have opened, I took a deep breath.

I made Mosley's tea in the best possible way, although I won't deny that I would have liked to spit it out, and I let Thomas's coffee sit long enough for it to acquire the color of tar.

I had to go back into that office no matter how much I would have liked to avoid it. As I did so, both men interrupted their conversation, which was in a worryingly low and threatening tone of voice. With my attention focused on the teapot, I placed the tray on the desk and did not look at either of them. Mosley was smoking a cigarette and I felt his intimidating presence over me, as well as his disgusting strong cologne, so sweet it cloyed me like a piece of licorice would. Thomas's cologne, however, was more subtle, woody, and of course I really liked it.

"Thank you" Thomas was urging me to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"Let me taste your tea, Olivia," said Mosley suddenly, and I had no choice but to meet his eyes. He was smiling at me again and in his expression I noticed a hint of mockery. He took the cup, and as he raised it to her lips, I glanced at Thomas out of the corner of my eye to found he was looking at me the same way; we were both expectant and did not know what that pathetic clown would come up with now.

"Ah!" Mosley exclaimed after tasting the drink. "The worst tea I have ever drunk in my life".

"I can make another one, if you want," I hurried to speak. Yes, the guy was a bastard, but it was still my boss' visit.

"No, my dear." Mosley waved his hand. "Although you make me two hundred teas from two hundred different kinds of leaves, it would still taste like shit. The problem is not the tea. The problem is how you make it."

"Anything else, Mr. Mosley?" I heard Thomas ask through clenched teeth.

"Certainly not. Nothing else". Mosley stood up and tossed the cup onto the desk with such contempt that half of its contents spilled onto the tray. Then he tossed the cigarette butt into the teapot. "I can't say it's been a pleasure to discuss politics with you because, to be honest, it never is”. He smiled once more. "Just as I have not enjoyed his secretary's horrible tea, although I have enjoyed her beautiful ass".

He released that contempt with such staunch naturalness that I couldn't help but be surprised. Thomas, however, stood up and while he wasn't going to hit him, the defiant attitude seemed to me as if he was figuratively punching him. Mosley left without saying goodbye, walking straight, his chest swollen with pride, as if he were the most worthy human being on the planet when, in my eyes, he was nothing more than a piece of shit in shiny shoes and foul perfume.

"Fucking son of a bitch..." Thomas cursed in a whisper. Needless to say, he was very upset.

"God," I was still out of place. "What a… disgusting man", was the only qualifier my stupor allowed me to emit.

"If he was just disgusting, I wouldn't be worried," Thomas said and drank his coffee in two shots. I watched him stunned. "Sorry, Olivia. When I found out that this bastard was on his way, I called Ada's house to tell you not to come but according to Karl, you had already left”.

"Don't worry." Once again, I was trying to take a load off him. Sometimes I felt like he cared for me too much. "It may surprise you, but I'm quite used to dealing with ... that kind of ‘compliment’. In fact, all women are. When we waalk down the street it is inevitable".

"Well, I'm going to give you a gun as well as a horse." I couldn't tell if he was serious, and Tommy didn't allow me to analyze it too much: suddenly, he had placed his hands on my waist. "I didn't like him looking at your ass, ” he confessed. "Only I can do such a thing", and he kissed my neck.

A tickle similar to electricity ran through each of my vertebrae as I felt him lick the skin of the jugular. I did not know if that attitude, so sudden and different from the one he had had just a couple of seconds ago, was the product of jealousy or he had wanted to behave that way since I opened the door without knocking.

"I like this dress," Thomas said, breathing heavily at the junction of my collarbones. His hands wandered eagerly up my back.

"Really?" I questioned. "It's the ugliest dress I have"

"It fits you well". Thomas trailed a path of kisses from my throat to my chin, and his hands circled my rib cage in a caress until they coupled with my breasts.

I let out a slight groan at the feel of his touch there and placed my hands over his, teasing him. He bit my earlobe and immediately afterwards, he pulled his face away from mine to look into my eyes. I witnessed his pupils dilate and the light blue of his irises become brighter, wetter. Thomas released one breast to slide his fingers down my abdomen and slipped under the skirt of my dress.

I felt his seething palm on my cold thigh as he pushed me a little against the edge of the desk and, taking all the time in the world, he fiddled with the lace on my underwear.

"No," he stopped suddenly and I looked at him, perplexed. I must confess that at the time, I hated him a little bit. "I’m not going to fuck you on a desk like a whore. You're not a whore,” he said. "You deserve a bed in a beautiful room".

"Mr. Shelby," the sudden paroxysm that invaded me, made me almost call him by his first name but I intended to play the questionable formality game, "fuck me here," I demanded, and he found my demand amusing. Thomas giggle gutturally and that only helped turn me on even more.

"Are you giving an order to Thomas Shelby?" He asked provocatively.

"Forget that I'm your secretary because, after all, I'm not. There is hardly any work here and you know it. It isn't necessary for you to have a secretary and that is why they have all quited”, I blurted out, annoyed. He was still touching one of my breasts and hearing me, he squeezed it.

"I'm… Olivia, Mr. Shelby. The poetess. The woman Lord Pennington called a cabaret girl". I witnessed that I had made a mistake in mentioning the old man as Thomas' gaze seemed to darkened. "And I’m not a whore because I am not going to charge you or do what I will do out of obligation. I am going to enjoy a lot when you fuck me over this desk".

"Shit" In a second, he was the same again but this time, I could tell he was trying to restrain himself. I couldn't help but wonder how easy it was to turn a man on with simple words. Thomas kissed my lips erratically. "But you said to me that we weren't going to fuck until you knew all my secrets”.

"I already know all your secrets”, I said, thinking about the business he had with the Chinese.

"You're wrong." Thomas was serious again but no less needy of me. "Do you know why Mosley was here?"

"No"

"Then you don't know all my secrets." Suddenly, Thomas released me and walked away with such blatant imperturbability that no one would say that he had been about to penetrate me. I noticed how he avoided my gaze and sat back in his chair as if nothing had happened.

"Excuse me…?" I was immensely confused.

"Thank you for the coffee" he interrupted, put on his glasses and took some papers. "Could you get me the accounting books for the years 1929 and 1930, please? They are in the archive office, on the first floor".

I looked at him for a couple of seconds waiting for his face to confess that he was joking. But I already knew that Thomas Shelby was not a man inclined to comedy, but rather was an arrogant and had the capricious habit of teasing almost everyone. I had already experienced his sarcasm and swagger in that very office, and although I didn't slap him yesterday, I did leave the office in great annoyance, huffing and setting the tray with the mess Mosley had made on his desk.

I made my way to the Company archive in desperation, begging to forget Thomas's snub as well as his caresses, and when I arrived, to my surprise, I found Elizabeth "Polly" Gray, Ada and Thomas' aunt, squatting down, checking books on a shelf.

That Polly was there caught my attention, for I knew from Ada that she had left the Company in 1929 and she recently had given her share of the company to her daughter-in-law.

Polly noticed someone approaching her and was not alarmed, but looked away from her reading indifferently.

"Good morning, Olivia," she greeted me and returned her attention to the book she was holding in both hands.

"Good morning… Elizabeth" I didn't think I should call her 'Polly'. "Do you know where I can find the accounting books for 1929 and 1930?"

I saw the woman scrutinizing me.

"Thomas sent you looking for them?"

"Yes."

"Well, it seems he wants you to leave him alone for a while because even if you turned this archive office upside down, you weren't going to find anything about those years," she said, standing up, determined to ignore me. She turned around and started walking away with the book that she never stopped reading.

"Why do you say that?" I began to follow in her footsteps. I hated being left with questions on the tip of my tongue.

"Because everything about those years was burned, dear" Polly snapped. "Anyway, I would advise you to spend an hour or two here. You don't want to go back to Thomas' office if he wants you out".

"Can I help you with something?" I volunteered. The thought of being idle in that cold, yellowish place that smelled of old books made me very anxious.

"No, you can't" Polly was clearly annoyed by my insistence. "Well, now that I think about it… yes, you can”, she corrected herself. "I need you to help me find all the betting books from 1919 to 1924. We already have a small part done: I have found one of the many from 1919".

"It must be a lot of books," I muttered, without any intention of sounding like a complainer.

"There are many, yes, but well, it will entertain you and you will be useful". I saw her narrow her eyes. "I know you hate this job but they pay you well, doesn’t it?".

"I don't hate it, although I do wish there were more things to do," I found myself confessing.

"More things to do besides fucking my nephew?"

Apparently, that rainy day I would receive a thousand attacks. In Polly's voice I did not hear hatred but questioning and distrust, as if I was trying to get something from Thomas and that offended me. I wanted nothing more than his kisses, body, and affection.

"Sadly, I didn't fuck with him yet" I frowned.

"Ha!" Thomas and his aunt share the gene that makes people arrogant.

I decided that I would not bear any more insults and, turning my back on Polly, I began to walk.

"Where do you think you are going?" Polly asked me.

"To the office, with Mr. Shelby." I glanced at my wristwatch sarcastically. "It's almost twelve o'clock. Time for before-lunch-fuck” I attacked.

Suddenly, the roles had switched, and now it was Polly's heels that followed me. I'm not going to deny that for a second I was afraid of what that woman could do to me.

"There are children involved in your relationship and you know it. Thomas has two children". She took my arm brutally and forced me to face her. "I don't want you to hurt them. Not the kids, Olivia, did you hear me?"

"What makes you think that I’m going to hurt his kids?" I asked, very indignant. "Did you say the same thing to Lizzie regarding the son Thomas had with Grace?"

"Grace was already dead and Charles needed a mother." Polly took me tighter. "Now Charles and Ruby have a mother and trust me, they don't need another one".

"I don't pretend to be anyone's mother," I managed to break free. Polly was petit but very strong. "I don't want to have children and because of my age, you should have realized that by now,” I added and saw the woman disturbed by my words.

Polly stared at me for a couple of seconds, as if reading something on my features.

"You will beget a child," she whispered, abstracted.

Disturbed by her strange attitude, I almost ran out of the archive. Although I was aware that what awaited me in Thomas's office was not very hopeful, I decided to return there because it had become my only safe place within that building full of insane people.

The calm that had been increasing as I approached the secretariat door fell to the void of terror when, as I entered it, I caught sight of Oswald Mosley sitting in my chair.

It was very upsetting to see him there, in Thomas's offices, at my workplace, with his hands on the desk as if he were playing some kind of role in his twisted mind. I thought that he was already gone and his presence disturbed me so much that I couldn't help but freeze, trying to process what I was seeing.

"Hello again," Mosley greeted me with a smile.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came back because, when I was about to leave this building, your boss called the reception and ordered them to bring me up. Apparently, he wants us to finish our little talk. I went upstairs and he told me to wait for him in his office, but I got bored and started rummaging through your things". Mosley settled into my seat. "Your chair is quite uncomfortable but I suppose you don’t spend much time sitting down, ”he concluded using a double meaning that I decided to ignore.

"I need to work, Mr. Mosley. If it's not too much trouble, I'd ask you to go back to Mr. Shelby's office. You'll be more comfortable there.” I forced myself to ignore the trembling in my legs and walked over to the desk, demanding that he allow me to take a seat.

It was at this point that I realized that Thomas had not sent me to the archive to leave him alone, as Polly had suggested, but to protect me from Oswald Mosley once again. And once again, fate prevented me from staying away from that despicable being.

Mosley stood up and moved away from my desk, all of this without taking his eyes off me for a second and I couldn't feel more uncomfortable. When I sat down, he stood in front of me, watching everything I did.

"It really makes me uneasy to know where Mr. Shelby got such a bad secretary from," he attacked. "Are you fucking him?"

"No," I denied with anger manifesting on my cheeks. I felt them boil. It seemed that everyone assumed that Thomas and I were fucking. "I'm his sister's best friend".

"Oh, I see. You're fucking his sister".

"No"

"Are you a whore, Olivia?" He asked and at that point, nothing that could come out of that man's mouth surprised me. "If you are, I can pay you well."

"I'm not a prostitute," I answered bluntly. I could think of a thousand things to say to him but I was at a disadvantage.

"I'm sorry to assume things that you are not." Mosley shrugged. "Mr. Shelby usually surrounds himself with whores. He even married one. Do you know Lizzie?"

What he said caught my attention and, apparently, astonishment showed on my face as he smirked at my reaction. I canceled any kind of gesture again and avoided looking at him.

"I know her," I replied.

"Very good at her job, I doubt you can beat her" Mosley said and sighed. "Although you must be less 'used'. That's always a virtue".

Staring at Thomas's schedule, I tried to ignore the fact that Mosley had walked over to my desk and leaned over me. It was when I felt his hand on mine that I winced.

"Nice fingers, Olivia. I wonder how many cocks you have surrounded with them".

I stood up. The chair fell and Mosley reveled in my fear. I saw him licking his upper lip as he approached where I was and when I tried to move further away, he grabbed me by the shoulders and with the brutality of a beast, he turned me around and then put me againts the wall.

I felt him rubbing against my tailbone. I couldn't help but sob in silence because I was paralyzed and the scream had stuck in my throat.

"I've noticed how important you are to Mr. Shelby. I guess you are his favorite cunt,” Mosley said. He had abandoned his soft voice to one that was grotesque, almost inhuman. "It's only fair that I take something of his when he took something of mine. I'll fuck you for every vote I lost because of him. Don't take it personally" I felt his tongue on the back of my neck.

"Let her go."

Through the tears I got a glimpse of the figure of Thomas. He was pointing a gun at Mosley, hatred deforming his face. When Mosley released me, I ran to Thomas as if he were my only salvation, and when I got there my legs gave out and I allowed myself to fall to my knees. I choked on my own crying as Thomas kept threatening to shoot.

"Well, Olivia." Mosley talked to me with an imperturbability that bordered on the surreal. He seemed little concerned about having a gun pointed at his head. "Apparently your cunt is better than I thought. So good it is, that Mr. Shelby is going to kill me for daring to approach it." He shrugged as he adjusted his belt. "You are a very rare socialist, Shelby. You should learn to share with your comrades".

"You are not my comrade." Thomas had abandoned all restraints that had once limited him to venting his hatred against the man. "I'm going to shoot to your fucking head".

"Here? In your offices?" Mosley made a gesture of denial as if he was disappointed. "Don't you feel sorry for dirtying your floor with my brains?"

"It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

I stood up when I caught a glimpse of Thomas pulling the trigger. Around me, everything happened in a way similar to that of the movies in theaters: pieces of images projected in my eyes, which seemed alien and distant, ran through time at a much slower pace.

When I placed my hand on Thomas's hand, which was the one he held the gun with, everything stopped. I saw him blink and he stopped pulling the trigger to turn his face and look into my eyes.

"No," was all I could say and Thomas understood, putting down the revolver.

Thomas is a murderer: he has been in the war, I already knew that from Ada and, although I never investigated further to protect my feelings towards him from disappointment, my soul tells me that he carries several deaths on his shoulders. A person who has never taken the life of another, lacks the necessary coldness to want to shoot with such determination. There will always be a hesitation, the certainty of making a mistake. It's not his case, and wanting to stop him from committing another murder wasn't what drew me to action at the time either.

If he killed Mosley it would be his end, our end, and I would not allow anyone to ruin our story.

Yes, I am placing Thomas and myself above a human life. Am I ashamed of it? No. Do I feel good about myself because of my incipient dehumanization? No, and that is why, in addition to the horrible experience that I lived in my secretariat, my mind broke last night when I wrote this entry for the first time: I was attacked by the beast that is Mosley, rescued in time by the beast that is Thomas and I discovered myself that I am also a beast.


	13. Born to Lose

_May 5th, 1931._

This morning I was going to take a train back to London. I was lying on my bed while Ada finished packing my bags, and the tea, in its cup, cooled on the nightstand.

"Eat something", Ada ordered, folding a dress. "The travel will be almost four hours long".

"I don't want to go back to London", I said. The dejection caused by the laudanum had prived me of the vehemence necessary to argue.

"It's for your good". Ada had been repeating the same to me since last night, when she told me she had bought a train ticket. "The best thing you can do is stay away from my brother, at least for a while".

"A 'while' that will be forever" I curled up on my bed and closed my eyes. I had slept for more than ten hours but nightmares had haunted my sleep. Oswald Mosley was in all of them.

Ada said nothing and just answered with a defeated sigh. She was fed up and it was to be expected. Since I met Thomas last month, I only had been giving her headaches. Even Karl, who is already a teenager, is not that troublesome, and even though Ada has always considered me her little sister, I'm sure she never imagined that adopting a sibling would imply such a burden. Had she known, she would have refused, because Ada is the kind of person who detests problems and tend to get rid of them.

So, at that time, I thought she was getting rid of me.

"Did you call your mother last night?", my friend asked me suddenly.

"No".

"Who will be waiting for you at the station, then?"

"No one", I replied, feigning anger even though I was falling asleep.

I heard Ada drop the suitcase abruptly but I didn't open my eyes. This scene was closer to the fight a mother and her disobedient daughter would have, and to be honest, it seemed pathetic. Those attitudes weren't typical of me, although I have to admit that I was becoming more stubborn lately. Perhaps what bothered me the most was the fact that my friend was right.

"Yesterday a bastard almost raped you in your secretariat and you almost witnessed a murder", Ada said and at the simple memory of Mosley's breathing in my ear, the skin on my arms prickled. "Wasn't all that enough to make you realize that this is not your place?".

"What's not my place, Ada?" I questioned, forcing myself to open my eyes and sat up a bit in my bed. "Birmingham? Your house? Thomas?" My friend was sighing again. "You've been telling me since last night that I have to go, taking advantage of the state I'm in because you know that I wouldn't give in if I wasn't medicated, as if getting on a train would prevent me from returning later on my own".

"I'm saving your life", my friend snapped. Exhaustion showed on her face. "I'm tired of telling you this: you don't know Thomas. You don't know the Shelbys. You have no idea what they… we have done".

"You know everything about me", I snapped. I wanted to cry. "We have known each other for years. We ate together, drank, laughed and cried. We share clothes and even a bed. All this time you had the opportunity to tell me your story, the story of your family, and you didn't, and you are the offended one?"

I saw Ada swallow hard and lower her eyes. My words had hurt her and God only knows how much I hated hurting Ada. Never, until that moment, had I been so cruel to her. I was sincere, yes, but sincerity is not always an option when it is linked to a truth that the other party already knows and tries to forget.

"If I told you my story, you would have walked away from me as if I were a leper." Her eyes were full of tears but she struggled not to let any of them escape. "Freddie died a couple of months before I met you, you know that, and in life he always wanted us to stay away from the Shelbys. After his death, I was alone in London with a baby, but going back to Birmingham was not an option. I'd put that past behind me, I told myself. I wasn't Ada Shelby anymore, I was Ada Thorne”.She began to cry.   
"Everyone here knows who I am. Who we are. You know I came back to Birmingham after giving birth to Beth; I did it to feel more secure. Yes, I hate my family's legacy but they are the only ones who can protect me when the going gets tough, and you can imagine how tough the goings are when a fascist leader hangs around my brother's office and somebody blows up Ben’s".

The memory of Ben caused Ada to escape an anguished sob. I remembered what Thomas had told me a couple of weeks ago: _'Ben Younger died because of me'_.

"I wouldn't have walked away from you", I said, wanting to calm her down. I tried to stand up but was too dizzy. “I know the woman you are and the story of your family would never have changed that concept".

"Well, I wish it does now". Ada shrugged dejectedly. "Only then can I get you far enough away to make sure you're not in danger. I'm tired of losing people I love because of the Peaky Blinders". It was the first time I had heard the name of the band although, since I arrived in Birmingham, I had always heard someone mutter those two words when I was walking down the street with Ada. "All the Shelbys have lost someone, without exception, either physically or because sooner or later, they get fed up: Polly lost who would be her husband. Arthur, to his wife, who divorced him. Thomas was widowed, I lost Ben, John was murdered ..."

"John was murdered?" I interrupted, disturbed by what I had suddenly heard.

"Yes, Olivia, he was murdered. He didn't die when he fell off the horse as I told you at the time. The fucking New York mafia killed him”. Ada confessed in anger and pain. "They shot him in his own house, in front of his wife and without thinking about it, as if he were a simple piece of meat".

I didn't know what to say when my friend started crying again. I understood why Ada had been so reluctant to accompany her to John's funeral when this had happened. I was aware that her motives transcended me and that I would never fully understand how murky life could be in such an environment.

I gulped and wanted to stand up once more. I needed to hug her and ask her forgiveness, but my numb legs did not allow it and I fell to the floor.

"Olivia!" My friend, alarmed, came over and led me to bed again. As I did so, I hugged her tightly and she responded to the hug. "Okay, okay", she comforted me as I too had started crying. "You're right. If I had told you the truth from the beginning, we would be saving all this but it is that by bringing you to Birmingham to help you with your career, I never imagined that you would end up falling in love with my brother. Thomas is the complete opposite of what always attracted you in a man, why him?". Ada pulled away from me and searched my face for an answer.

"He's the complete opposite of what Andrew was and that's enough for me", I admitted. "Thomas is sincere, and I know that if he falls in love with me, I see him incapable of hurting me".

"Tom can hurt you in other ways", Ada said. "You see what happened before yesterday. The trouble he gets into and the people he surrounds himself with make him more dangerous than a cheating man".

"I can help him".

"Help him with what?" My friend scrutinized me with her eyes.

"I can help him to change".

My friend gave a laugh that, in conjunction with her watery eyes, made her look strange.

"He's forty years old, Olivia. Tommy has been behaving like this for a long time and has a character that is degenerating more and more. Even Grace couldn't change him, and you intend to do it?" Ada asked.

"You say he's been behaving like this for a long time. That means it wasn't born being what he is now, I observed.

"No, he wasn't born being what he is now. Before France, Tom was someone else". I watched her raise the corners in a sad smile. "Before France, we were all different".

"Let me try, Ada." For some reason, I was asking her permission. "Let me make him the man he was before the war. In his eyes I still see humanity, he is not completely lost, and something tells me that he hates what he has become. I know you don't understand". I felt faint and lay back on the bed. "... but for me it's as if he's crying out for help".

"God". My friend was surprised. "You love him. At what point did you start loving him so much?"

I did not know what to answer. Until that moment, I had not been fully aware that what I felt was love. I believed that my capacity to love had succumbed the day that Andrew had broke with me for the second time, but apparently my heart had been hibernating, immersed in a state of healing, waiting for someone to be worthy of it. That someone had been Thomas: the true interest he had shown in my art, the empathy that his broken soul generated in me and the way he kissed me, as if he were so in need of affection, had made me a woman with a disposition to feel again.

The doorbell made us both jump.

"It must be Polly", said Ada. "She's going to stay with Beth while I drive you to the station".

I remembered the confrontation I had had with Elizabeth Gray in the company archive and regretted that Ada had fired the babysitter after she verified her complicity with me.

"Oi!" Ada exclaimed, downstairs. "Tommy!"

Lying on my bed I tried to assimilate what was happening as I heard footsteps going up the stairs. When I saw Thomas at the entrance to my room, I couldn't help but smile a little. I had really missed him those two days of sheer torture.

"Olivia," he greeted, taking off his cap. "How are you feeling?"

"Tom, what the fuck are you doing here?" Ada appeared behind her brother and looked angry.

"I came to visit her", Thomas said, walking over to my bed. "I suppose today you're going to let me talk to her, aren’t you?"

I knew then that Thomas had tried to contact me since that dire situation had occurred in his office. I had a hard time understanding why Ada would forbid him to call or see me, since there was nothing wrong with it.

Thomas sat on the edge of the mattress next to me and gently stroked my head.

"Olivia will be catching a train in less than an hour," Ada said grumpily. "She will return to London".

"I knew that, that's why I'm here", Thomas said, practically ignoring his sister. He was absentmindedly combing through some strands of my hair with his fingers.

"How did you know?" Asked my friend, a victim of confusion.

"Ada, I spend about the same time in London as I do in Birmingham. Do you really think you can achieve something by sending her back to her house?", Thomas questioned. "The only thing you do by taking her away from me is face her in greater danger. Would you leave me alone with her?" Thomas asked Ada.

"No".

"Well then, I'll say what I have to say in front of you", Thomas resolved, looking back at me. "I'm sorry for what you had to live the day before yesterday, Ollie".

" 'Ollie'!" Ada was scandalized when hearing the diminutive and I, although I tried to contain myself, I expressed my happiness in a smile. When my friend saw me smile, she massaged her temples.

"It's fine… Mr. Shelby". I wasn't brave enough to call him 'Thomas' for the first time in front of Ada. "It wasn’t your fault. I should have been in the archive. How would you know that I was going to return so soon ...?"

"Actually, I should have guessed or at least handled the possibility", he said. "I shouldn't have left that office but I did it. Again, I apologize".

"Okay" I said, and his presence by my side soothed me so much that it made me close my eyes.

"What did they give her?" I heard Thomas ask Ada. There was concern in his voice.

"Laudanum".

"Why did they give her that shit?"

"Because she's been having panic attacks ever since she got back from the Company, Tom", Ada snapped, and even though I wasn't looking at her, I knew she crossed her arms. "Olivia is an ordinary woman. She is not used to leading a life like ours but she doesn't seem to want to understand it. Maybe if you tell her, she'll accept that it's best for everyone if she goes back to London and forgets about us".

"The best for everyone? Even you?" I intervened waking up, hurt by my friend's words.

"Even me", said Ada.

I brought my eyes to Thomas and saw that he was sympathetic. In a way, he felt guilty and I knew it when he couldn't meet my gaze. For my part, I did not consider that he was to blame for the breakdown of my friendship with Ada, but rather that it had been the consequence of a succession of errors that could have been avoided. Now, it was late: Ada was fed up with me and I had already fallen in love with her brother.

"What did you tell her?" Thomas asked Ada.

"The slightest thing", Ada replied. "The rest is up to you".

My friend, who at first had refused to leave me alone with her brother, left the room convinced that given the outlook, Thomas was on her side and would also consider sending me to London as the best option.

After a few seconds of silence in which Thomas was thoughtful, he finally got ready to speak:

"Do you remember what I told you when I kissed you, here, in this room?" He asked, still somewhat abstracted. "What did I answer you when you asked me who I was?"

"You told me you were a monster."

"Exactly", Thomas agreed. For some reason, he couldn't look me in the eye. "I'm a monster, Olivia. The worst of them all. I have done things that others would consider atrocious but that for me, are nothing more than actions that are part of everyday life".

"What do you mean?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. I wanted Thomas to be honest with me. I needed to stop knowing him based on assumptions.

"I could start with the worst and confess that I have murdered but you must already imagine that", he said and looked at his hands as if they were stained with invisible blood. "I've killed so many people I've already lost count. At first, I counted them. I stopped counting when I passed two dozen".

Compassion, fear, and anguish found themselves in my heart, causing my chest to begin to ache. I had told Ada that I still sensed humanity in Thomas and that was true; for this reason, seeing him responsible for so many deaths and knowing that the guilt was eating away at his conscience, broke my heart. He was a tormented man, haunted by a thousand demons. A victim of his own nefarious acts.

Thomas took my silence as an invitation to keep talking.

"My family and I have always done everything needed to survive, even before the war", he said. "The fraudulent gambling business was already our business before France. We were looking for a life of dignity in a way that most people would find questionable, because as much as bastards fill their mouths talking about merit, I have found that such a thing only applies to the rich and criminals. That's why I admire people like you, Olivia; people who are born into poverty and find a decent way to live with shit around their necks, without muddying others in the process. We Shelbys couldn't stand that pit, we wanted to get out of it and the only way to do it was by being the Peaky Blinders.  
Being the Peaky Blinders, people respected us and stopped insulting us. Being the Peaky Blinders, we commanded a respect that would otherwise have been mockery.  
My mother committed suicide and my father abandoned us when I was nineteen. I fell in love with a woman shortly after and she died holding my hand. I went to France believing that there was still a chance to acquire a decent life and what I found there convinced me that the world is more shitty than I already thought it was".

I brought my hands to his, which he twisted with anxiety and somewhat unsettled by the touch, he looked at me.

"The world sucks, yes, but it is up to us to avoid it to consume us", I tried to cheer him up.

"It has already consumed me", he confessed. "I've lost everything, Olivia. Since I was born, I have only known how to give losses. I'm a gambling man. I’ve spent my entire life wanting to make myself a winner, trying to ignore the fact that I was born to lose".

"You have to keep gambling, Mr. Shelby". I worried about the way Thomas talked to me. He spoke those words as if he had no reason to live.

"Gambling on this life is like knowingly gambling on the horse that's losing". The comparison seemed to amuse him, but as he smiled I saw his grief. "It's like putting all your fucking money on the horse you know has a wounded leg".

"Horses with wounded legs are shot in the head", I observed.

"Yes".

"But we are the ones who determine when to put the bullet in the horse's head. We are the ones who determine when it can no longer run". I took his hand tightly and he laced his fingers through mine. "Mr. Shelby, do you really think you can't run this race anymore?"

Thomas watched me for a couple of seconds. In his opaque eyes I saw a reflection of vitality pacing. I did not know for sure if I had managed to motivate him with my words since he was much more broken than I initially thought, but I had led him to question certain decisions that already seemed taken.

"I can still run", he concluded in a whisper. "My leg is wounded, but I can still run". He looked at my knuckles and caressed my phalanges. "Will you bet on me, Olivia?"

"Yes, Thomas. I will bet on you".

The hope that the simple pronunciation of his name gave him touched my heart. He took those beautiful blue pools that he had for eyes and placed them on me, thanking me without using words. I never imagined that he had been waiting for this moment with such anxiety and that a detail as insignificant as calling him by his first name could transform his expression and restore his vigor.

Thomas Shelby was a man surrounded by luxury but in need of simple gestures.

"Ada will be upset with you when she knows your resolution", Thomas said, as if suddenly aware of his behavior and trying to change the subject, "and she will slap me for failing to convince you to return to London."

"There is no God capable of making me return to that city", I launched, and everything that had lived there it came to my memory. "I hate it".

"Birmingham isn’t better", Thomas observed. "A couple of days ago, I spoke with my acquaintance, the one who is training your mare, remember?" I was somewhat surprised that he had actually bought me a mare. "Well, she told me that in a few weeks you can ride it. What do you think if we go to her estate? It has several hectares of country and there is good air".

"Are you asking me out on a date, Mr. Shelby?" I teased him and that made him smile.

"Drugged and all, you still have the mood to joke. Yes, I am asking you on a date. Likewise, the best thing is that you don't go to the Company for a while. I want you to recover well and forget… all that shit", Thomas concluded, standing up. "Have you managed to write something?" He asked suddenly.

"No," I confessed. "I haven’t been able to concentrate".

"Try to write because when we go to the estate, I want you to read me a new poem."

"I don't think I can write…" I hesitated. Inspiration had left my soul as well as stability, my mind.

"You can", he said, motivating me. "Write about me if you want. You have my permission" and before leaving, he kissed my forehead gently.

I smiled as I watched him leave the room and, once I was alone, I made my way to my desk. I sat down and took the pen; the smell of ink invaded my lungs. I stroked the pristine page of my book of poems and laughed a little at the curious naivety owned by Thomas Shelby: I had been writing about him since I had met him and would do so until the pen broke apart in my hand.


	14. Pretty (PART ONE)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! I know I took so long to update but, believe me, to translate this chapter was hell.  
> Anyway, this is a very long chapter (and a sassy one), so I decided to split it in two parts. This is PART ONE. I'll publish PART TWO in a couple of days.  
> Remember that kudos and comments are important to me and motivate me a lot since translate this thing is such a torture lol. You can also find this story on wattpad (same name), in english and spanish!  
> Enjoy ;)

_June 7th, 1931_

My last entry was over a month ago and if I am to find a justification for such neglect of my memories, I would say, without shame, that the last four weeks without Thomas were a martyrdom for me. They were a torture for my soul in which I had to live with my thoughts, alone in Ada's house while she was at work, and the immense need I felt for the man who stole my heart.

I couldn’t find any peace through the holidays Thomas gave me. My panic attacks were increasing, even more when I was in the solitude of my room, and the laudanum that the doctor gave me in small doses at first, increased the nightmares and fears in quantity.

During these weeks, I tried to call Thomas several times since I knew that he would never stop by the house, but he did not answer. I assumed that he would be in London but that was no excuse for his disinterest. I confess that I reached a point where I almost began to detest him because of his indifference but now I understand that he did it to uproot everything that could remind me of what had happened in his office.

I'm not sure if he achieved his goal but I admit that spending a day with him healed my soul much more than his disinterest.

My heart races at the simple memory and on my skin I perceive a slight tingling, a mixture of happiness and pleasure. Four weeks passed without seeing him, but twenty-four hours were enough for him to show me all his affection. A huge affection, overflowing with pure feelings, opposite to the image that people have of Thomas Shelby.

I love him. I love him and I'm not sorry to say it. I love him silently and one day I'll be brave enough to let him know. Someday when he can answer me the same. Someday when Ada stops fearing for me. Someday when he's not tied to another woman.

It was Saturday, June 6th, and Thomas had shown up at Ada's house while we were having breakfast. I could not contain myself and I hugged him as soon as he manifested himself in the room, and hiding my face from the inquisitive look of my friend, I cried a little. He responded to my hug in a subtle and almost cold way but I didn't care. When he said that we were going to the estate of his acquaintance, Ada snorted and I smiled. I left my breakfast half off and did not even prepare changes of clothes since we were only going to spend the day although, at the express request of Thomas, I brought my notebook of poems.

The gentle breeze of a spring morning filtered through the car window, taking on the character of a blizzard during the sections in which the car had a free road. Thomas drove in silence and I dozed in the passenger seat, relaxed by the noise of the engine. Then, I felt his hand on my knee.

"How do you feel?" Thomas asked me.

"I'm fine... and happy", I confessed.

I saw how he outlined a smile with his eyes still on the road.

"That's good", he said. "You're going to love your mare. What are you going to name her?". I spluttered realizing that I hadn't thought of such a thing. Thomas seemed amused by that oversight. "You're a writer and therefore have a good imagination. I guess you can come up with something original".

"You might be surprised to learn that I'm lousy at names", I admitted and I let out a sigh. "That's why I write poems and not novels".

"Well, when you meet her, she'll whisper the name she wants you to give her". While Thomas was trying to remain stoic, he was perceived as excited.

"From having the ability to speak, whisper, and other things, she'll laugh when I ride her without having the slightest idea of what to do". I saw Thomas hold back a laugh. "And you will do the same”, I said, pretending that he had offended me.

"I'm not going to deny that I'll be amused by it", Thomas shrugged, "but you'll come out of that estate knowing how to ride".

The journey took another quarter of an hour. When the car stopped, I found myself confused since I only saw countryside around me. Looking out the window on Thomas's side, my surprise was capitalized: not far from the road and surrounded by green pastures stood the most opulent building I have seen since my arrival in Birmingham. Its architecture was similar to that of a London mansion and not a country estate like the one Thomas owned. The simple fact of imagining what it would be inside made me open my mouth like an idiot.

"Wow..." I mumbled, stunned.

"Yes, my reaction was the same the first time I came", Thomas said.

Thomas drove up to the entrance and as we got closer to the front of the building its details became more beautiful. It was then that next to a huge window I recognized the figure of a woman dressed in riding clothes and there I was aware that I had already made my first mistake: I was wearing a tight skirt.

The woman approached to greet us as soon as we got out of the car and, devoid of any kind of expression, she rested her dark eyes on me, analyzing me from head to toe as if I were some kind of unknown specimen.

"It's been a long time, Thomas", she greeted but in my ears, it sounded more like a reproach. "Is she your friend?”, she asked, approaching me with her arm extended. She greeted me with a handshake.

"Olivia Westerling", I introduced myself somewhat embarrassed. The presence of that woman overwhelmed me; it was the complete opposite of what I was or could become.

"May Fitz Carleton", she introduced herself. "Thomas told me about you. He said you can't ride".

I felt myself blush. May's words had not been spoken with the intention of offending but there were three of us and I was the only one who had no knowledge of horses.

"She can't ride, no", Thomas chimed in after clearing his throat. For some reason, he looked uncomfortable, “but she'll learn".

May took a few seconds and looked at me once more. She had definitely noticed my clothes as soon as I had gotten out of the car, but even so, she bothered to make my lack of knowledge more than obvious.

"With that skirt it will be a bit difficult", she observed, arching an eyebrow. "Have you brought suitable clothes, Olivia?"

"No". The monosyllable came out of my mouth almost in a whisper.

"That she doesn't know that she can't ride in a skirt is understandable", May now spoke to Thomas as if I were suddenly a completely incapable little girl, "but that you have ignored that fact..."

"Why don't you lend her one of your trousers?" Thomas interrupted, and I witnessed how May didn't like the proposal at all. "You two have almost the same body shape”, he added, ignoring the woman's expression of discontent.

"Her hips are wider than mine but we'll try", May snapped relentlessly. I knew in that instant that that stranger hated me. She forced a smile. "Let's go in".

May stepped forward and started toward the front door. Thomas waited for me to be next to him to start walking. Apparently he had noticed my annoyance.

"Don't take it personally", he told me, lighting a cigarette. "May is a millionaire since she was born".

"I didn't know that being born rich justified the lack of tact". I was offended and couldn't hide it.

"Nobody teaches these kinds of people to measure their words, Olivia", I felt Thomas stroke the small of my back surreptitiously. "They're used to saying everything they think without anyone reproaching them. Beyond that, May is a good woman, trust me. She’s very lonely and that is why sometimes behaves like this".

"Lonely?", I asked curiously.

"She's a widow".

Something echoed in my mind when Thomas informed me of May Carleton's situation. At first, I couldn't tell the difference between that strange sensation that had settled in my chest, as if suddenly certain information had been revealed to me. Then what is usually called “female intuition” showed me a phrase, a faint memory, of an argument I had had with Ada over a month ago and I felt my heart race.

_"Every woman who gets my brother’s attetion, ends up, sooner or later, in his bed. Without exception. It doesn’t matter if they are spies of the Crown, millionaire widows, communists, aristocrats ... why do you think that with you it would be different?”_

Millionaire widows. May Fitz Carleton was a millionaire widow and she was not for Thomas a mere acquaintance who trained his horses. That was the reason for her animosity. That was why she disliked me so much, and I could do no more than silently curse Thomas for having consciously dragged me into the home of a woman who was or had been his lover.

Walking beside me, smoking his cigarette, he looked so indifferent and unconcerned that I would have liked to slap him right there, but what could I do? I was his lover too, just like May. The only one who had the legitimate right to be offended was Lizzie Shelby and she wasn’t there.

I was angry and my bad mood didn’t allow me to delight in the details of the interior of the living room. Surrounded by fine china and gold, all I could think about was running out of there, but urban Birmingham was far away and I couldn't take Thomas's car with me. That would mean leaving him stranded there, alone with May.

"Follow me to a guest room, Olivia. I'll give you a pair of trousers there", May told me, feigning kindness. "Where are you going?", she stopped Thomas, who had started to follow us. "Olivia is going to change her clothes. Wait here".

In the guest room, a maid brought me some trousers and trying to avoid May's inquisitive gaze, I went behind the screen and began to undress.

“How long have you known Thomas?” May asked as soon as the maid left the room and we were alone. It was obvious that she had wanted to question me since we had arrived.

"Two months ago", I said. "And you, Mrs. Carleton?"

"Nine years". Because of the screen, I couldn't see her face but I knew she smiled. "No need for formalities with me, Olivia. You can call me May", she added. "Thomas told me that you're his secretary".

"I'm a friend of his sister," I corrected her, "and as a result of this, his secretary."

"Thomas must have a lot of esteem for you to give you a mare of such good stock", May commented while I struggled to button up the trousers. The last button did not reach its buttonhole and then I realized that I, indeed, have wider hips than May.

"We get along well", I just answered.

"How well?"

At that moment, I came out from behind the screen. May was looking at me again with those observant eyes.

"Well, it looks better on you than I thought", the woman commented, pointing to a pair of boots next to a couch. "Put those on too. You won't be able to put your feet in the stirrups if you're wearing heels".

"Thomas and I have a relationship according to what a man and his secretary would have", I lied, although I could have avoided answering the question May had asked me. My most competitive part cried out to provoke that woman.

"It must be a close enough relationship for you to address him by his first name", May narrowed her eyes.

"Like I said, I'm friends with her sister". I took a seat on the couch to put on my boots.

"The relationship you have still seems curious to me. He gave you a horse and insists you learn to ride".

"What do you mean, Mrs. Carleton?" I faced her, standing up. "You must know that if you and Thomas are close, I care very little”, I attacked.

My heart was going to leap out of my chest at any moment, and although May Carleton didn't know me, I knew that she had realized that I was lying. I was trying really hard to keep my feelings from showing on my face but I could feel my cheeks burning and my jaw was set.

"Once we were ‘close’ but not anymore". May crossed her arms. "Whatever is between the two of you, I won't get in the way, Olivia. It's not up to me to do it so don't worry”, she said, referring to Lizzie. "All I'm going to tell you is that man is only capable of loving one woman and that woman is Grace Shelby".

"Grace Shelby is dead".

"Exactly. Neither you nor I can compete with a deceased woman. The simple memory of her makes her perfect and she is no longer here to disappoint him”. Hearing May, I lowered my gaze. She was right. "You're young, beautiful and from what I see, you're also smart. I hope Thomas doesn't break your heart like he once did break mine".

May opened the door and ordered a maid to gather my clothes and leave them on hand for when we returned from the stables. Leaving my mind flooded with thoughts, she left the room and I forced myself to follow in her footsteps. It was not my intention to get lost in that maze of rooms.

When we returned to the living room where Thomas was sitting, he seemed delighted to see me wearing trousers. I felt strange: I was not used to wearing that garment although I had to admit that it offered more freedom than a skirt. I figured it would accentuate my curves too and that's why Thomas was captivated.

We made our way to the stables just as the sun was reaching its zenith. When we got there, an old man led us to the cubicle where the gift that Thomas had given me for no reason was.

I must confess that when I saw that animal, there was an immediate connection. She was a mare with shiny brown fur, thoroughbred, and her eyes twinkled at my sight with almost the same joy that mine did. Fascinated, I went to her snout, caressed her head and she received it as if she had known me forever.

"She's beautiful", I said abstractedly. I had left Thomas and May behind me.

"It seems she likes you", Thomas commented and leaned over to pet the animal. "Hello, pretty, how are you?", he greeted her.

"Pretty", I murmured and looked at Thomas.

"What?" Thomas looked confused.

"That's what I'll name her: Pretty".

Thomas smiled and I smiled back at him. That day, he was allowing himself to smile and that filled me with joy.

"Did she whisper it to you?" Thomas leaned close to my ear and asked the question as if he was completely unaware of May's existence.

"No, you gave me the idea", I said softly, teasing him.

The old man took Pretty by the reins and led her to the training arenas, where Thomas, May and I then headed. I stroked the animal again while they were saddling her, and once this was done, May headed towards me.

"Come, we'll help you up".

I stood in front of the stirrups with some fear and watched May and Thomas, waiting for them to give me directions.

"Put your foot in the stirrup", the woman seemed amused by my ignorance. "No, the other one. If you go up with that foot you will be sitting backwards".

We were both surprised when we heard Thomas chuckling. In my case —and apparently in May's case as well— it was the first time I had seen him laugh. It was a different laugh than the ones I already knew, since it lacked all kinds of mockery, bravado or sarcasm and was the manifestation of true happiness. Apparently, my ignorance caused him tenderness.

"I can't", I concluded after several attempts to climb onto Pretty's loin.

"You seem to be afraid of hurting the mare", May observed, frowning. "You won't hurt her. Stand on the stirrup without fear and pass one leg to the other side".

"Come on, Ollie. I'll help you”, Thomas placed the cigarette to his lips and took me under the armpits, lifting me up.

This made it easier for me to climb into the saddle, and once I was sitting, I watched Thomas and May from that height. I felt imposing on Pretty's loin.

"Okay, now take the reins", May pointed out.

Following the instructions of the woman, whose patience seemed to be very little, I took the reins and dread ran through me as the mare moved under me, moving forward a little.

"Ah!" I yelled, stooping to hug the mare's long neck. I felt like I was going to fall.

"God…" I heard May whisper.

Looking back at those two, I saw them holding back their laughter. Once again, I was struck by how immensely happy Thomas looked and how May was shooting furtive glances at him, enchanted by the side he was making known. I did not feel jealous, but on the contrary: that I was the cause of that state, reaffirmed my love and dispelled my fears.

"This will take longer than I thought", May said to Thomas.

"It doesn't matter. We have all the time in the world".

That ‘all the time in the world’ was reduced to the hours it took for the sudden spring storm to settle in the sky, taking sunlight with it. May ordered the mare to be kept in the stable and we returned to the estate just as it was beginning to rain.

We ate early, hoping that this would reduce the anxiety caused by the weather and the inescapable situation that it entailed. As I drank my soup, I prayed that it would stop raining to end this visit full of tense moments, but my torments did not seem to be heard as the downpour was getting worse and worse.

The clock read half past eight at night and I was watching the rain through the window when May, quite anxious, was forced to speak.

"You won't be able to go back to Birmingham in this rain", she observed. The idea of having us as guests didn’t seem to please her. "The roads become dangerous".

"We're sorry for the inconvenience, May", Thomas apologized, though the outlook didn't matter much to him.

"The house is big, you already know that. It’s not a problem". May sighed and closed her eyes for a couple of seconds as if she was preparing to say something that she found difficult to pronounce. "Are you going to share a room?"

Thomas looked at me. With his eyes he asked me if giving an affirmative answer was the right thing to do and with my silence, I replied that I delegated the responsibility for such a decision to him. Anxiety made me bite my lower lip because I knew what it would mean to share a bed with that man.

I don't want to be misunderstood: there was nothing in the world that I craved for more. Ever since he kissed me for the first time, I wanted him to take me, but the reality was that Thomas was still a married man —although the little attachment he felt for Lizzie was public knowledge— and besides, we were in the house of a woman who had previously been his lover, which made it all the more awkward for me.

"Yes", Thomas replied, and May nodded. The response hadn't surprised her.

"I suppose, Olivia, you haven't brought any nightgown either", May said, turning to me. Seeing me shake my head, she sighed. "I'll lend you a nightgown. After all, my clothes don't look bad on you”, she added.

After a maid provided me with a beautiful white silk nightgown, May led us to one of the many guest rooms. It was smaller than the one I had previously used to change clothes but it was still just as ostentatious. Decorated with antique paintings, the dim light from the lamps on the nightstands was absorbed by the thick red velvet curtains. A dark wood screen had different asian motifs hand painted.

"I'm going to change", I informed Thomas once May left.

"Alright"

Behind the screen, I was shaking like a virgin. It wasn't cold but I was bristling. I heard Thomas undress as well, and as I struggled to remove my corset, I felt my heart shake within me. Nothing had happened yet but the simple fact of imagining him with me in a bed made a tingling manifest between my thighs.

The only man I had ever slept with had been Andrew. I had started dating him in my twenties and when we broke up at twenty-nine, I never slept with anyone else. My experiences with Andrew hadn't been exactly good, and that was why my friends, including Ada, didn't know where I got inspiration for my poetry. I guess my imagination had bothered to supply what Andrew hadn't been able to provide. I had never known delicacy or pleasure with him, but something inside me told me that with Thomas it would be different.

I stepped out from behind the screen, hugging the clothes I had taken off, shivering under the silk nightgown. Thomas had his back to me, wearing only his underpants and folding his shirt meticulously while smoking a cigarette.

Hearing me he turned around and looked at me. And I looked at him.

I was surprised by the amount of scars his chest revealed to me. There were many that were the product of stitches, but others were definitely poorly healed gunshot wounds. The tattoo on his left chest caught my eye: it seemed to represent a sunrise.

I placed my clothes on a couch and a lightning split the sky as Thomas flopped onto the mattress, face up, with the cigarette between his fingers.

I went to the bed and lay down next to him. He looked at me.

"My Aunt Polly is a gypsy witch". I was missed by his words and I couldn't help but look confused. "Yesterday I asked her if today it was going to rain and she said yes. That's why I went to Ada's house looking for you".

I opened my eyes like plates. He had planned all this. He knew that if it rained, we couldn't go back to Birmingham and would have to spend the night there, together.

"You knew"

"I told you it would be in a bed, Ollie". He took a drag on his cigarette and managed a smile. "A bed, in a beautiful room".


	15. Pretty (PART TWO)

He put the cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand and pounced on me, kissing me tenderly. The taste of tobacco made me intoxicated, along with his cologne and the feel of his skin against mine made me shudder in his embrace. He stopped kissing me to look into my eyes and stroked my forehead, brushing back a few strands of hair.

Beneath his body, I felt safe. It was like a prison I had always longed to be a prisoner of. He kissed me again and when his tongue burst into my mouth, I was delighted to receive him. His caresses moved to my silk covered breasts and I moaned in the middle of the kiss.

Thomas directed his attention to my neck, where he licked, bit and kissed the skin, then slid down to the junction of my collarbones and from there to where my nightgown covered my sternum. With his thumbs he pressed the nipples and while inside me I was cursing the piece of cloth that kept me from his touch, I felt him stick to me even more and I felt his erection on my belly.

"Take off that fucking nightgown", he demanded, breathing heavily on my chest. All the tenderness he had originally had was gone. The need spoke for him. "Get up and take it off for me".

I would be lying if I said I was surprised by what he was asking of me. Thomas is a very sexual man and you don't have to sleep with him to realize that. It is obvious that he too is the type of man who takes delight in what he sees and enjoys watching a woman strip her clothes. In my case, I had already done such a thing before so it did not cause me any shyness other than the expectation generated by seeing how he would react.

He released me and allowed me to stand up. I placed myself in front of the bed and before doing anything, I took a few seconds to observe him. I too am a person who can marvel at what my retinas capture and what the sight gave me back at that moment, turned me on even more: Thomas was lying in bed, his body full of scars was agitated. He was watching me expectantly, his eyes sleepy and wet, his arousal showing in his underpants. I gulped as I realized how much I wanted this man, how much I yearned for his body and having him inside me.

I grabbed the straps of the nightgown and pulled them free, allowing the silk to slide over my skin and fall to the floor. Thomas blinked a few times at the mere gaze of my breasts. Without giving him the possibility to process my incipient nudity, I also freed myself of my underwear and thus, finally, I was naked in front of him.

"Come". Thomas stretched his hand out to me after letting out a sigh. I laced my fingers with his and went back to bed. "Come with me, Ollie".

Once I was lying down again, he went straight to what interested him. He licked the left nipple and the warm moisture in that sensitive area sent an electricity run down my back. Thomas placed his attention on my right breast making use of his caresses and when I felt him bite I jumped. Thomas laughed throatily against my skin and I couldn't help but curse him. He was so good at what he did.

He went down, leaving a trail of wet kisses. When he reached the navel he stopped and met my gaze.

I didn't expect him to ask me for permission since it wasn't like Thomas Shelby to ask permission for anything, so when I saw him leering at me I knew that he was trying to be captivated by my reaction. He continued to slide his chin towards my femininity, his eyes on me and, once he had placed my legs on his shoulders, he did what he had to do.

"Tom!" I exclaimed, not quite sure why. His name was the first thing my tongue allowed me to say when I felt him there. "Ah!", I squirmed.

I brought my hands up to his head, praying that he wouldn't separate from me. I remember it now and it scandalized me, but seeing him so focused on giving me pleasure, with his fingers buried in my thighs, made the fire inside me burn more strongly.

"Olivia", he called me, taking a moment to breathe, "I've wanted to do this to you since I saw you for the first time", he confessed and rose until he was on top of me again. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. The sweetest. The goodest". He kissed my neck as I digested his words. "Fuck, I don't deserve you".

_"All I'm going to tell you is that man is only capable of loving one woman and that woman is Grace Shelby"._

How pathetic it must be that at a moment like that, the image of Grace Shelby wandered through my mind. Her demeanor charged with elegance and mysticism, as I had known her in her portrait the night of the gala dinner, haunted me like a specter and as Thomas kissed me again, she whispered in my ear that he would never be able to love me as he had loved her.

The pleasure and the anguish, both feelings so contradictory, intermingled inside me and apparently showed on my face as Thomas looked at me in confusion.

"Is something wrong?"

I shook my head, trying to downplay it but the tears had already appeared in my eyes. The realization that I once again loved a man who did not belong to me deposited an immense hatred of myself.

"Ollie, what's wrong?", Thomas looked worried.

"This isn't right, Thomas", was all I was able to say.

"Are you saying this because of Lizzie?"

No. I wasn't saying it because of her but I couldn't reveal my true feelings to Thomas either, since the last time I'd named Grace things had gotten out of hand.

I nodded, praying the lie would suffice as an answer.

"Lizzie and I are still married because it's convenient for both of us", he explained. "Convenient for her, due to the financial situation, and convenient for me since for my image as a parliamentarian, it's better to be married".

"I don't want to be your mistress" I said and tried to make that statement also serve to make him aware of my battle against the memory of Grace Shelby. "I don't want to be a May Carleton in your life".

Thomas was surprised when I named May.

"What did May tell you?", he wanted to know, and I sensed that this was my chance.

"That you left her for Grace".

"Grace is dead", Thomas simply replied. The gloomy tone in his voice warned me that this was a rugged subject.

"But you will love her forever, won't you?" I felt a tear slide down my face and stop at my earlobe. "She will always be your true love".

"Olivia", Thomas wiped my tears away with his thumbs, "I'm not going to lie to you: I love Grace. She was taken from me and died because of me. She was the only person capable of making me feel alive after the War". Grief-stricken, I tried to free myself from his embrace and get out of bed. I had had enough.

"Wait. Let me finish”, he stopped me, pressing me against the mattress. "For you I feel something, I don't really know what it is but whatever it is, without a doubt, it’s something that also makes me feel alive. Today, after many years, I was able to laugh and for that I’m grateful to you. Today, after many years, my day did not revolve around death, money and power. I can't promise you that I won't hurt you but let me see if I'm capable of loving you".

"You're telling me you're going to play with me", I snapped. My face was wet with tears.

"I'm not going to play with you", Thomas tried to calm me down. "All I'm telling you is that we bet on what is happening between us, even if we lose later".

"I can't afford to lose, Thomas. My heart won’t be able to bear any more disappointments".

"Are you going to leave me?" he asked and suddenly and looked immensely sad.

"How am I going to leave you if we are nothing?", I questioned.

"We are something and you know it". Thomas kissed my face congested with crying. "That is why we are here. That is why I have tried to get close to you since I met you in the same way that you have not denied me. There's something, Ollie".

In my case, that "something" was love. The deepest love I have ever felt in my life. Deeper than I ever thought I felt for someone who put an engagement ring on my finger twice. In Thomas's case, I had no idea what that “something” meant, but I was comforted by the fact that I knew I could stir up such feelings in a broken person.

I had seen him myself a month ago, sitting on the edge of my bed, speaking of himself with a contempt similar to what he would have for his worst enemy. Thomas Shelby was a man who, as he himself had said, had lost everything and was unaware of what kept him alive.

I'm not trying to justify it because it is more than obvious that his words had hurt me, but it is the price I have to pay for falling in love with a person whose disturbed soul is irreparable. I knew it from the moment I saw him: the sadness in his eyes, the secrets and half-truths about him, the way in which Ada tried to protect me from him, only increased his character as a lost man and still I fell in love.

It was late, and as I allowed myself to feel again the passion that a few minutes ago had intoxicated me, I told myself that there was nothing I could do but give him the opportunity to fall in love with me too. Walking away was not an option since, although it would have been the healthiest thing to do, seeing myself imagining a possibility, a "what if...", seemed pathetic to me.

Thomas kissed me again and I hugged him tightly, as if suddenly afraid of losing what had never been mine.

He was gentle in caressing me until finally we were both back to where we were before committing sincericide. He ran his fingertips down the curve from my waist to my hips and infiltrated my sex with his index finger.

He snorted when he heard me moan and bit my ear.

"Tommy", I called out as the frenzy increased and he added one more finger.

"I find it funny that you choose to call me by my nicknames at a time like this but I like it", he observed. His voice was rough and deep. "You called me ‘Tom’ when I was down there and now you call me ‘Tommy’. I wonder what you'll call me when I'm inside of you".

He stopped touching me and pulled away from me. Disappointed by the fact that he had stopped, I looked at and saw that he was about to take off his underwear.

Finally, Thomas Shelby discovered for me what I had been imagining for two months in the darkness of my room. He seemed quite proud of his masculinity and he was rightly so. He allowed me to contemplate him for a few seconds and then, taking me by the arms, he forced me to get on top of him. He leaned back with a smile on his face.

"I told you that you were going to leave this estate knowing how to ride".

I was scandalized by those words, although I couldn't hide the fact that they were funny. I let out a nervous giggle, almost hysterical, and he laughed too.

"I hope you're better riding a man than a horse", he added, using his typical arrogance.

"Are you challenging me?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Yes", he assumed. "Surprise me, Olivia Westerling".

Above him, I possessed all power. Until that moment, Thomas had done with me what he had wanted but now I was the one who had it at my disposal and I loved that.

As I put my fingers around him and tugged a bit, he jerked under me and groaned. That fascinated me. A shadow of need crept across his face and took me by the hips, urging me to sit on top of him. I caressed his face, owner of those precious features, while he directed it towards my sex and I received him willing and eager.

We both gasped at the simple contact. My insides loomed around him and I saw Thomas swallow hard in exasperation.

"God, Ollie", he whispered and his hands caressed my back. "Ollie, Ollie, Ollie..."

Having him inside me caused a sensation that I had never felt before. Beyond physical perceptions, the pleasure that came from knowing that I was really desired, seeing myself capable of generating those kinds of reactions in a man, lit a fuse that made lust burn and I brought it inside me to the base in a way abrupt.

Thomas's surprise was capital: his eyes widened and he fixed them on mine, immediately throwing his head back and lying on the bed.

I rested my hands on his chest and as I prepared myself to thrust him for the first time, I caressed an old scar on his right shoulder. I heard him moan gutturally, his eyes back and his chest rose in a sigh, begging for air.

I started the sway. Blood ran through my limbs at an incredible speed and I felt my heart crash against my ribs, agitated. Although my body asked me to close my eyes so that I could concentrate on the sensations, I could not miss the sight that returned my sight: I had Thomas Shelby under me, his skin beaded with sweat, his face disloged with pleasure and I was the cause of that. It was me who was on top of him, it was my glutes that he clung to, it was my name that emanated from his throat every time I ride him.

"Ollie", he was calling me again. "Ollie, Ollie, Ollie..."

I couldn't help but respond with gasps since I had lost the ability to speak. It was curious that he had longed for me to call him by his nicknames when now it was he who called me by mine.

Suddenly, I saw him frown and as if some thought had slapped him, he came back to reality. Thomas grabbed me by the waist and lifted me up, with an ease that led me to question whether I was too weak or had he acquired superhuman strength. He made me release him and almost desperately, he threw me onto the mattress, to which I fell backward. Thomas was placed on top of me, as we had been in the beginning and to my surprise, he did not penetrate me again but, to my astonishment, he dropped his seed on my belly.

_"You will beget a child"_ , Polly Gray had told me a few weeks ago, and I, like an idiot, thirsty for Thomas, had forgotten that particular warning. We hadn't been careful enough.

"I'm sorry", Thomas apologized. His words puzzled me and I looked at him, only to find him with a half smile on his face. "I would have loved to come inside you but we can't take the risk” Thomas added.

He was right. Thomas was already a father and I didn't want to be a mother, and our strange relationship was just beginning to settle.

After cleaning myself, I went back to bed and lay down next to him, just as I had done a while ago, when nothing had happened yet. Thomas leaned against my chest.

"Would you recite a poem to me?" He asked, almost asleep and hoarse. I remembered that the last time I had seen him, in my room, he had told me to write since he wanted me to read him a new poem.

"I couldn't finish the new poem you asked me to write", I tried to excuse myself. "Although it may not seem like it, it’s not so easy to write poems, Tom. I could read you another one from my notebook, if you want, but it won't be about you”, I explained and rested my chin on his head.

The silence Thomas gave me in response seemed strange to me at first and it was after a few seconds that I realized that he had fallen asleep. Trying not to wake him up, I looked at his face and was surprised to see such peace on his features. Thomas slept calm, happy, unperturbed; devoid of any fear and regret, and felt my heart clench with love.

For my part, I couldn't sleep. I tried, but it was difficult having a man like Thomas on top of me, and the adrenaline that I had experienced was preventing me from falling asleep.

Morning came and with it the loud singing of the birds. It was no longer raining and when Thomas got up at dawn, I was able to get some sleep. When he woke me up, we left the room in the spirit of going to the dining room. I couldn't help but glance at the bed before closing the door: the sheets were rumpled and the portraits in the paintings looked stunned as if they had witnessed everything Thomas and I had done.

_"A bed in a beautiful room"_. I smiled.

May waited for us with breakfast while she read the newspaper. Seeing us, I got disturbed by the feeling that her look gave me, since it was as if she knew what had happened. We greeted each other and began to eat breakfast, once again surrounded by an uneasy and eternal silence that I found myself preferring when I heard May prepare to speak.

"How did the nightgown turn out, Olivia?", she asked.

I almost choked on the tea. The question had been insidious and everyone at that table knew it. I hadn't slept in the nightgown since I had only had it on for a few minutes until Thomas demanded that I take it off for him.

"Very comfortable. Thank you", I just answered.

"Didn't the lace itch?" May insisted, frowning. "After you went to the bedroom, I realized that the maid had given you a nightgown that I had long ago discarded for that very reason: the lace on the neckline is terribly itchy and doesn't let you sleep".

"I was very tired. To be honest, if lace made me itch, I didn't realize”, I said, with my best poker face.

"Yes, I guess". There was a hint of sarcasm in her words that both I and Thomas recognized.

Finally, the time had come to leave that estate. When we finished breakfast, Thomas and I wasted no more time and announced our departure. May, who was also anxious to get rid of us, walked us to Thomas's car, which had been left out all night, and as Thomas struggled to start the engine since it had gotten soaked, May approached me, silent like a cat.

"He loves you", she said.

"What?"

"Thomas loves you".

"No. He doesn't”, I corrected May, and I couldn't stop the anguish from manifesting in my voice.

"Then he will, eventually", she said, shrugging off my words. "May I ask you a favor, Olivia? A woman-to-woman favor?". I nodded, puzzled by her sudden kindness. "Make him happy", she requested with some sadness. "I don't know you but you seem to be a good woman. Beyond having a similar body shape, I see that we are similar at heart. I think you would be able to give that man all the affection he needs and that he doesn't allow me to give to him".

Her words shocked me but they seemed sincere and in them I did not detect a trace of animosity. May Carleton had already lost Thomas once to Grace, and apparently she had assumed she would lose him to me too.

"I will, May". I smiled at her and she smiled back at me. I couldn't blame her for the attitude she had shown to me in the beginning.

Thomas managed to get the car to start after several attempts, and when he leaned out of the window and saw May and me smiling at each other, he raised an eyebrow.

"It works now, Olivia", he said. "Let's go".

I said goodbye to May with a slight nod and got into the car. When we left the Carleton lands, I let out a sigh and all the tension in my body was released. I settled into the passenger seat and prepared to sleep until we reached Birmingham.

"We'll have to go back," Thomas said suddenly, and I looked at him curiously. He was smiling. "In the end, you haven't learned how to ride Pretty".


	16. Fire

Everything was fire around him. When Tommy opened his eyes, he was surrounded by flames and black smoke blocked his lungs.

He was lying on his back on a bed and recognized the ceiling above his head. The cracked wooden ceiling that rainwater used to seep through was the same one that Olivia hated and which he had promised her to fix. The flaking plaster walls that surrounded him, and through which pillars of fire rose, were the same as those found inside the brick house. _That_ brick house.

Tommy couldn't move. He was paralyzed on the burning bed, naked, and Olivia slept on his chest. He tried to call her and warn her but his throat refused to utter a phrase.

_< <Olivia, wake up>>_. Lacking the ability to speak, Tommy spoke to Olivia with his mind, hoping for a miracle. _< <Wake up, for fuck sake>>_.

But it was too late. The fire had reached the sheets and started to burn the white cotton. It reached his legs and Tommy was surprised to find they weren't burning. It reached Olivia's feet, and while she didn't move one iota, Tommy despaired.

"Wake up!"

His upper body rose on its own at the exclamation that he was finally able to let out. When Tommy opened the eyes, confusion overwhelmed him: he was in the living room of Ada's house, Olivia's diary on the floor, the box on the coffee table. The first rays of dawn, whitish and dying, filtered through the blinds, and the ticking of the clock was the only sound his ears could catch.

_< <It was a nightmare>>,_ he told himself. Tommy's pulse was racing. He settled into a sitting position and felt an immense urge to vomit.

Tommy barely remembered the state in which he had arrived at his sister's house. The laudanum had acted and spoken for him, but had not succeeded in blurring the conversation with Ada. Reading Olivia's second diary made him succumb to exhaustion, falling asleep.

He picked up the notebook and tried to remember where he had left the reading. Tommy couldn't help but smile as remembered that night that Olivia had recounted so well. He wondered how her day continued after this and with sincere curiosity, he started reading again.

* * *

*******

* * *

We arrived in Birmingham shortly after noon. Thomas parked the car in front of Ada's house and before allowing me to get out, he took me by the chin and kissed me. The gesture surprised me, since my attention was focused on the very possible discussion that I would have with Ada as soon as I crossed the portal.

"I'll see you at the Company on Monday", Thomas said.

For a moment it seemed to me that he wanted to tell me something else. I am not going to risk it and assume that it was a manifestation of affection since such a thing contradicted everything that had given me to understand the night before. According to Thomas, there was something between us but, for him, that something was not love. He loves Grace.

Smiling, I got out of the car and with a brisk step I entered my friend's house. I had not closed the wooden door when I heard footsteps heading towards the hall from the living room and expecting to meet Ada's angry face, I was surprised to see Polly, with a cigarette in her hand.

"It's her, Ada. Here's your friend". Polly took a drag on her tobacco as she kept her haunting gaze fixed on me.

Ada appeared almost instantly. Seeing me, she narrowed her eyes in an angry expression and crossed her arms. Her attitude didn't surprise me.

"We couldn't go back", I hastened to excuse myself. "It started to rain in the afternoon and..."

"We already know, girl", Polly interrupted. "It rained here, too. The surprise would have been it didn't. We are in England, after all".

_"My Aunt Polly is a gypsy witch. Yesterday I asked her if today it was going to rain and she said yes. That's why I went to Ada's house looking for you"_. I had not forgotten the confession that Thomas had made to me the night before since it was impossible to forget, not only because of the prophetic character that Polly Gray acquired in my eyes, but because of my fear that he had made Polly known about his intentions towards me.

"You should only have made one call", Ada snapped. "Even though as soon as you got into Tommy's car I knew you wouldn't be spending the night here, I was concerned, and if I wasn't calling Polly for advice, it would never have occurred to me that my brother's plans were so elaborated", she commented.

"Thomas usually doesn't bother himself that much, you know?” Polly said. Her eyes were shining insightful. "He always fucks his women anytime, anywhere. He doesn't worry about taking them to a mansion or waiting to rain to have an excuse to do so".

I felt my cheeks turn red and I was aware that my pride was hurt. I didn't know how far Thomas had made Polly aware of his plan, but something told me that it wasn't necessary. Apparently, Elizabeth was a woman with the ability to read the gestures and attitudes of people.

"We didn't fuck", I rushed to cover even knowing my lie was stupid and pathetic.

I saw Polly giggle as she blew tobacco smoke out of her nose.

"Poor idiot…" she insulted me.

"Pol!" Ada caught her eye.

"You are like a child, Olivia. An idiot child". Polly was insulting me again, but before her niece addressed her once more, she was quick to speak. "You stink of Thomas, don't you realize?". I was thrown off by her statement. Until that moment, I had waited for her to say anything but that. "There is only one man who can afford that cologne in all of Birmingham, and that's my nephew".

To my stupefaction and just to make matters worse, Ada came up to me and sniffed me as if I had suddenly been transformed into a piece of cherry pie, wine, or anything else that could be sniffed with such impetus.

"Goodness, it's true", my friend murmured with an expression of disgust. "I hope your perfume isn't as strong because if not, trust me Lizzie will notice". said Ada with some concern.

"She already noticed", Polly snapped and I swallowed, almost terrified. "Do you really think a woman like Lizzie wouldn't realize that her husband has a mistress?", Polly questioned, talking to Ada. "Also, her husband is Thomas Shelby. The most obvious and easy to read man on this planet when it comes to women".

On Monday I have to go back to the company, and just imagining Lizzie Shelby's fury made me clench my fists anxiously. I wasn't going to give up on Thomas, for the world, but I can't deny that facing his wife creates a conflict full of guilt and fear inside my chest. I don’t know her; I don’t know how she could react and how she would take my desire to remain with her husband if there was an opportunity to resort to dialogue before she caught me by the hair.

"Thomas and I have something", I said, feigning fortitude, "and we're not going to give it up just because his family objects".

" _'Something'_? And what would that _'something'_ be, Olivia?" Once again, the one who attacked and questioned me was Polly Gray. "Love?"

"No, it's not love". My heart stopped for a second because of the sudden sadness that washed over me.

"So it's just lust, dear. Don't get your hopes up". For a moment, I felt Polly sympathize with me and I hated generating pity in that woman.

"It's not just lust, Elizabeth", I snapped. "There's affection. There's trust. There's something else. I saw it in his eyes, in his caresses. He told me so".

"Thomas told you that?" Polly Gray laughed so hard that both Ada and I jumped. "Let's see, Ada, we who do know Thomas: since when has your brother been a fucking poet? Since when does he use words like 'affection'?"

"He never uses those words", my friend agreed in a low voice. In a way, she was annoyed by her aunt's attitude but she wasn't willing to agree with me either.

"Olivia, open your eyes". Polly's tone was almost violent. "Thomas just wants to fuck you and he’ll do it until he gets bored, or until you let him".

"Elizabeth, you weren't there, you didn't see how he looked at me…", I appealed, pissed off.

"Thank God I wasn't there", Polly said sarcastically.

"Thomas is your nephew, yes", I continued, "and it's true that you know him much more than I will ever get to know him, but you can't tell me what he felt yesterday while I was in bed with him, what he told me and what he transmitted to me". I took a deep breath. I was ecstatic in fury. "I might be an idiot child, just as you say, but I'm capable enough of knowing when a man wants just a fuck or hopes to get something more from me than just my body".

I tried to keep my voice from breaking. Ada was staring at me with wide eyes, as if my words had thrown her off balance, and Polly remained silent, analyzing me as she finished the cigarette. I saw Polly shake her head, as if she considered me a hopeless case, and that didn't help to calm me down.

"You're in love", Polly Gray concluded.

"I am", I agreed unashamedly, almost proud of my feelings.

"You have no idea what such a thing entails", Polly sighed. "You've made the worst mistake, Olivia. You've fallen in love with a Shelby and that will take its toll on you".

* * *

*******

* * *

As if with her testimony, Olivia had called Polly out, the latter entered the living room interrupting Tommy's reading. He witnessed how his aunt passed him completely, as she searched for something in the bag she had left on a dresser before storming out of the room the night before.

"You told her she stank of me", Tommy spoke and his dry throat made the words sound like growls.

"What the fuck are you saying?", Polly looked over her shoulder frowning.

"You told Olivia she stank of me the morning I brought her to this house after going to Carleton's estate".

His aunt scrutinized him with her eyes for a second or two. Then she ignored him once more and poured herself a glass of gin, as if she was begging the alcohol to bless her with patience.

"I told Olivia a lot of things", Polly concluded. "As you progress through the diaries, you'll see".

"Did you read the diaries too?", Tommy asked.

"Of course". Polly walked over to the couch and, to Tommy's surprise, she sat down next to him. "I adored that girl", she added. Almost in pain, Polly took a sip of her drink.

"It didn't seem like you adored her".

"Are you saying this because of the way I questioned her at first? How did I deal with her?" Tommy's words had hurt Polly. "I did it because I didn't know her and considered her a threat. A threat to our family, to our businesses. A threat to herself and therefore to your sister". Polly stroked the crystal glass. "It didn't take long for me to realize that the threat was you and the one in danger was her".

"She saved Michael's life", Tommy said. The diary entry had brought him up to speed on how miserable his aunt had been with Olivia.

"And for that I'm eternally grateful". Polly's neck tightened. "Michael loved her too, you know that".

Tommy couldn't help but feel a slight burning in the pit of his stomach. He remembered very well that diary entry, not so distant, in which Olivia had related her meeting with the Company's board of directors and the first impression she had made of Michael. It was obvious that at that moment she had never imagined that she would continue to interact with that bastard.

"Do you think if Olivia had chosen him, she would still be alive?" Tommy wanted to know, and the resentment manifested itself in his voice.

Polly studied his face, quiet but visibly tense.

"She would never have changed you for Michael, or anyone. Olivia loved you and no one else”, her aunt concluded.

"Maybe she would be still alive", Tommy said that more to himself than to Polly. "They could have married and now they would be living in New York being fucking happy”. He gritted his teeth. "Far from England. Far from the Peaky Blinders. Far from me".

"Let her go, Thomas", Polly's advice came in a whisper. "You'll gain nothing by becoming bitter while you imagine her being happy with another man because there is no such possibility. She is not here anymore".

"How did Michael take her death?", he had to ask. Tommy ignored everything his aunt had told him.

"Bad", Polly said.

"How bad?"

"He wanted to go back to England". Polly couldn't keep her eyes on him.

"And why didn't he come back?"

"Because he was going to kill you if he did", Polly snapped and closed her eyes. For some reason, she was finding it difficult to speak. "Michael thought you were guilty of everything and I don't know how the hell I did to convince him to stay in America. You almost killed each other once", she recalled, "and I had a hard time avoiding it. A couple of years ago, you told me yourself that you were going to kill Michael and over time, I was able to put that idea out of your head. I did the same with Michael when he intended to murder you after what happened to Olivia".

"You would have let him kill me..."

"Don't be stupid", his aunt scolded him.

"Michael was in every right of him and he was right". Tommy touched the diary, now closed. "I'll call him", Tommy suddenly resolved, and saw his aunt move restlessly on the sofa.

"Don't even think about it!"

"I'll tell him to come, to kill me, and I will let him use whatever method he sees fit", Tommy was speaking to himself and Polly was babbling in distress. "Then he can go back to New York or keep all of mine since, as far as I know, he always liked my things a lot".

The creaking of the door made both of them draw their eyes to it. Into the living room entered, stretching the shiny back, the cat that had been Olivia's. His emerald green eyes sparkled smart on the pitch black fur as he caught a glimpse of Polly and Tommy sitting there, and he approached, tail lifting and rubbing the furniture.

"Tommy the Cat", Polly murmured, smiling bitterly and sadly. "Olivia was very unoriginal with names".

That observation brought to mind a lot of questions Tommy had been asking himself since he woke up groggy on the couch.

"Do you remember when, not long ago, I used to dream about a black cat?", he asked.

"Yes".

"I told you that a black cat, in dreams, meant treason" _'Tommy the Cat'_ came to the sofa and climbed on it, placing himself between Tommy and Polly. "At the time, I thought the traitor was Michael".

"And you were wrong", Polly snapped.

"And I was wrong", Tommy assumed as he stroked the cat. The cat responded with its purrs. "But it was true that there was a traitor among us", he added. "Today, I dreamed of fire, Pol".

"Fire?"

"I dreamed I was in the brick house, sleeping with Olivia and everything was on fire", he recounted, a feeling of dread running up his spine. "I wanted to wake her up but I couldn't speak nor move".

"Dreaming of fire means..."

"Destruction. I know". Tommy didn't let his aunt finish speaking. "And the fact that both Olivia and I were surrounded by flames, it means that I destroyed her and I also destroyed myself", he concluded. "I was able to leave everything behind and I didn't want to. Ironically, I was the one who started that 'fire'".

"Go home, Thomas", Polly was looking worried again. "I already told you once, but go home. Give your children a kiss and sleep next to Lizzie..."

"Lizzie left"

"What?", Polly looked confused.

"She got sick of me, and to be honest, she was taking quite a while".

"God, Thomas", his aunt stroked her forehead. "It was the only thing you had left. Did she take the kids?"

"She took Ruby with her"

"She should have taken Charles, too". Polly's conclusion didn't bother him or was strange. "You're dangerous".

"I always was", Tommy shrugged.

"You were always dangerous, yes, but not to this point. You're no longer aware of who you hurt". Polly stood up. "You have left Charles alone in the mansion for hours, with the only company of a bunch of servants who are only interested in the existence of someone who is capable of paying their salary. Come on, I'll take you to Arrow House", Polly said, searching her coat with her eyes. "And when we're there, I'll bring Charles with me. From now on, he'll live in my house, together with Morgan".

"Is Morgan here in Birmingham?" Polly's words caught Tommy's attention. He was unaware that Michael's son was living in England with his grandmother and Tommy witnessed from Polly's expression that it was not her intention to inform him about that.

"Yes, who was he going to stay with? Gina is dead and Michael is alone in New York, and he refuses to leave his son with unknown people for so long. He's not like you", Polly attacked him gratuitously, just as she always did when she felt cornered. "I offered to take care of him".

"I don't know if you're aware that we're talking about a distance of thousands of miles", Tommy straightened up. This situation seemed strange to him. Very strange. "Are you telling me that Michael put his son on a ship, alone, just like nothing?"

"Michael was here", Polly confessed, pressing her lips together. She hated herself for being so careless.

"That's obvious", said Tommy, "but when? Don't you say you had to stop Michael from going back to England so that he wouldn't kill me?"

"It was before... Olivia's death", his aunt explained but something in her tone of voice and her manner told him that she was lying.

"Well... two months have passed". Tommy cocked his head. "Two months without seeing his son, and then the bad father is me".

"Michael adores Morgan", Polly was offended, and Tommy knew that by insulting Michael, he would make his aunt talk again.

"He loves his son so much that he killed his mother"

"Michael killed Gina because she deserved it. That bitch. Fucking traitor", Polly blasted, intoxicated with rage.

"He killed her because he needed to get rid of Gina to win Olivia in love".

"You're an idiot but not enough to believe that, Thomas. You want me to talk, right? What the fuck do you want me to say?". Unfortunately for Tommy, his aunt was very smart. All the women in his family were.

"I want you tell me what the hell is going on with Michael".

"And what would that be? You really don't think he's in New York? Do you want me to call him and so you can check for yourself?" Polly questioned, her nerves on edge.

"I want you to tell me when the hell Michael was here in England" Tommy faced his aunt, standing up.

"He was here last week".

"Where and for what?"

"That's none of your business".

"Oh, of course that's my business, Pol". Tommy put his hands in his pockets. Anger at being kept from truth had brought him vitality back. "Have you already forgotten why he decided to leave in the first place?"

"You can be a fucking OBE and an MP but you can't deny Michael stepping on English soil", Polly clutched the empty glass. "He has the right to see his mother".

"Michael didn't see you for twelve fucking years of his life, why the hell would he have the need to visit you so often now?" Tommy questioned but did not allow his aunt to answer him. "Did he stay at your house, Pol?"

"If I tell you that he did, you will threaten all my maids at gun point until they confess that he wasn't there". Polly approached menacingly, her gin breath hitting his face. "So let me speak for them: no, he didn't stay in my house".

"Where the fuck did he stay then?" Tommy was furious but he knew his expressions were inert. He had lost the ability to manifest them two months ago. "Don't make me threaten you at gun point", he added sarcastically but at the same time, was very serious.

"You're scum", his aunt didn't look intimidated. "Are you going to kill me for protecting my son?"

"You're not protecting your son, Pol. You're protecting someone else”, Tommy snapped, and the stupor that led to his aunt turning pale told him he'd hit the nail on the head. "Don't worry. I'm not going to ask who are you trying to protect, because we both know the answer". His voice was icy and sharp as an icicle. "Just tell me where the fuck did Michael stay last week".

Polly hugged herself and took a couple of steps away, shivering and wandering around the living room. She didn't want to talk but Tommy knew she was facing a crossroads. Polly had a choice to make: protect Michael... or protect Olivia.

"He stayed...", Polly exhaled, as if her lungs had stopped working, "...in the brick house".

That was the answer Tommy wanted to hear. Taking the box, under Pol's troubled gaze and the curious eyes of the black cat on the couch, he left the room, driven only by anxiety and fear of knowing the truth. On his way to the hall, he passed Ada, who was coming down the stairs with Beth in her arms.

"Oi, Tom!" Ada tried to stop him by shouting, "Where are you going?". Tommy ignored her and alarmed, Ada turned to Polly, who had followed in the footsteps of her nephew. "What happened, Pol?"

Before opening the door, Tommy heard his aunt crying behind his back and Ada demanded to know what had happened, almost desperately. As he was starting the car, the door to Ada's house opened again and he saw his sister run in terror toward the car.

"Get out!" Ada knocked the window violently. "Get out of the car, Tommy! Let's talk! You're assuming things!"

Tommy ignored her again. He started the engine and, leaving a screaming Ada behind, he stepped on the accelerator. The brick house was on the other side of town, in Small Heath, the place where he had lived all his life. If he was driving fast enough, he might be able to make it in time to...

A thud found him at an intersection, followed by the unbearable noise of twisting metal, and a shower of crystals hit his face as his body went to the left due inertia. Tommy felt his head hit something, he didn't know what; the box on the passenger seat rose as if stuffed with feathers and Olivia's diaries flew through the air.

The last thing he heard before darkness surrounded him was a lot of voices and screams of horror.


End file.
